


That balance may return

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Healthier Coping Mechanisms, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slow Burn, The healing process is not a straight line, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24001681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: “Believe it or not,” Anna Ripley says, peeling off a bloodstained glove, “I rather like youalive,Percival.”She smiles down at him and, with the light behind her, her hair is like a dark halo.“Chin up,” she says, patting his cheek with metal fingers. “I’ll take good care of you.”
Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Anna Ripley, Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Comments: 168
Kudos: 242





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chamerion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chamerion/gifts).



> Please note: this first chapter is about the worst it gets in this fic. Most everything else is an improvement after this, barring the natural setbacks that come from healing. But this chapter? This is the pits.
> 
> Also... Anna Ripley is a piece of fucking work.
> 
> Many, _many_ thanks to Chamerion for their beta efforts and characterisation advice. I owe them a lot. Additional beta appreciation to the excellent [Strandshaper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strandshaper/pseuds/Strandshaper) who also, like Chamerion, pointed out where my phrasing went from archaic to "Aich what the fuck". _Sorry guys._
> 
> This whole fic is finished; I'll be posting new chapters on Mondays.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which bad things happen.

“Believe it or not,” Anna Ripley says, peeling off a bloodstained glove, “I rather like you _alive,_ Percival.”  
  
She smiles down at him and, with the light behind her, her hair is like a dark halo.  
  
“Chin up,” she says, patting his cheek with metal fingers. “I’ll take good care of you.”

* * *

He still can’t move from the bed. He can feel everything, including a horribly wide variety of hurts, and he can twitch his toes when it doesn’t hurt too much but he still doesn’t have the strength to lift himself up. Instead, Ripley sits with him, reading a book or tinkering with a design and talking to him about something or other. He wishes she wouldn’t but some part of him craves intelligent company all the same.  
  
“I heard you sometimes, you know,” she says one day. She’s a screwdriver in her flesh-hand and is probing gently at the one of metal. “With Retort. You went everywhere with that thing. Slept with it even. Sometimes I would hear you wake up screaming.” She looks over at him then, as though she knows the clenched and breathless feeling in his chest. “I liked to wonder what you were screaming at.”  
  
He shouldn’t speak but the words make it out anyway. “You,” he says. “Always you.”

* * *

“Come along,” she says, “Can’t be convalescent forever.” She’s pushing the wheeled chair down the hall and Percy doesn’t know to where. He doesn’t know why she’s kept him, really, either - he’s not said much and mostly seems to just be a captive audience for her.  
  
“Here we are,” she says, stopping by a door. Keys are fished out of a pocket, the door unlocked. It swings open and as she pushes his chair in the room illuminates.  
  
It’s a workshop. It’s almost like the workshop she’d had at Whitestone but without most of the alchemical paraphernalia. Instead the focus is the forge, the metal, the bits and pieces in familiar shapes scattered across the workbench.  
  
“I’ve been working on some alterations,” she says, striding over. “Would you care to help?”

* * *

  
  
He sits in silence. Ripley works quietly, piecing each gun together with neat, precise movements. A few times she pauses and takes up a screwdriver, poking and prodding at her mechanical hand, adjusting some mechanism for greater precision, but mostly, she works.  
  
“See?” she says, showing him a completed piece. “Better rotation and ease of reload.”  
  
It’s a beautiful piece. Beautiful and terrible. He doesn’t dare think how many will die at the end of this gun. It has none of the embellishments of his own, no attempts to make beautiful a means of brutality. It’s honest, instead, blunt and direct and Percy’s hands reach without thinking.  
  
Almost to his surprise, Ripley lets him take it. “It’s not loaded,” she says almost carelessly. “Examine it. Tell me what you think.”  
  
She returns to her workbench, back turned to him. The gun weighs heavy and yet familiar in his hand. It’s more like his old pepperbox in form than Ripley’s Retort but it’s sleek and refined. When he cracks it open it does so with a neat ease, perfect and precise. He’d almost admire it.  
  
“It’s terrible,” he says and Ripley laughs.  
  
“Says the man who invented the whole concept.”

* * *

“You can’t hide from me,” Ripley says. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking. You wanted ammunition for that gun, you wanted tools to play with. You’re bored, Percival.”  
  
He’s bored out of his skull but he won’t admit it. Even conversation isn’t enough but maybe that’s just because it’s conversation with Her. Instead, his mind goes around and around, coming up with concepts his hands itch to make. Arrows for Vex, a new adaption for Bad News. Another pepperbox, god, please, something his own and not bespelled and trapped by Ripley.  
  
“Nothing is free,” he says eventually.  
  
Ripley’s smile spreads across her face slowly, like blood pooling in a shallow cut. “I saved your life, Percival.”  
  
“For your own reasons.” He still doesn’t know what those reasons are. That terrifies him more than she does some days and he didn’t think that was possible.  
  
“Mm, true.” She turns and sets a hammer down. “But as I said, Percival, I rather like you alive. You’re far more interesting that way.”  
  
He glares at her and she gestures. “Go ahead. It’s your workbench now.”

* * *

He gets his legs back slowly. Ripley leaves the workshop unlocked. He doesn’t like that. Doesn’t trust that. She wouldn’t leave it open if she didn’t expect him to try to use it against her, which means she’s prepared for that. There’s the chance she’s bluffing but Percy is a betting man and even he doesn’t like to bet when it comes to Anna Ripley. Instead, he works on small things at his workbench and all of them things Ripley will find no use in.  
  
Small clockworks litter it within a few days, tiny mechanisms to set springs off or count a clock wrong. Miniature traps and models which move when wound.  
  
But they aren’t what he wants. He wants _out_. He wants Vox Machina. He wants _home_.  
  
And to get that, he needs a gun. Ripley has left him every tool he needs.

* * *

She’s standing in the doorway, gun held loosely in one metal hand.  
  
“I heard you,” Ripley says. “Day in and day out, from whispers to wanks. Don’t think I don’t know you, Percival. No one knows you better.”  
  
He stays sat on his bed, doesn’t dare to move. _I like you alive, Percival. You’re more interesting that way._  
  
He hopes to every hell that he can bank on that.  
  
The gun raises and points briefly to his hand before rising further to his shoulder. It’s a careful movement; he can see the considerations flickering across Ripley’s face. Hand means he can’t hold a gun but if she maims him he might never make a gun again. She doesn't want that. _You’re far more interesting alive._  
  
“Hand it over,” she says. The gun doesn’t waver. Her flesh hand lifts. “Percival. Don’t be a fool. You know very well how much worse I can make things for you. Give it to me.”  
  
Memories flicker across his mind like sparks from the forge. Burning metal, cold chains, dark cell. Ripley’s across the room taking the gun from his hand in the moment it takes him to snap out of it.  
  
“I told you,” she says. “No one knows you as I do.”

* * *

It’s on his workbench the next day. Carefully pieced apart, ready to be slotted back together.  
  
“Beautiful design,” she says. “It’s given me some new ideas.”  
  
Percy shudders. Full body, involuntary. Goosebumps prickle over his skin. Without even consciously thinking about it he strides over, picks it up. Two steps to the left, one push on the bellows.  
  
And he throws the metal into the forge.

* * *

She makes a new gun. He doesn’t have to handle it to see the ways it’s built from his destroyed design. Hers has no embellishments. No detailing. Nothing to mitigate the horror of what it does. In some ways that makes it more beautiful - utter efficiency, no denial of what it is. In others, it just makes it worse. Ripley’s own pragmatic simplicity cutting through to take only the pieces of his creations she likes, surgically precise.

She can be a surgeon too, he remembers. She’d taken the stitches out of his side the last week. 

Percy doesn’t work on a gun. He doesn’t work on his clockworks. He doesn’t work at all, just sits in a corner and stares into space. Oddly, Ripley doesn’t seem to mind. If anything she seems amused. 

“No one likes their plans to fail,” she says. “But come along. Tantrums do no good.”

She doesn’t push him, though. Just leaves him in the corner of the room, staring off into space, mind a million miles away until an unexpected touch brings him back. 

It’s her hand on his cheek. “Come along,” she says. “Suppertime.”

* * *

He returns to his bench. He starts with his clockworks but his hands itch for more. He wants out. Needs out. Needs air. He can’t stand being cooped up in here even if he’s allowed a surprising amount of freedom. 

More. How about _new?_ He turns his mind to an old idea, takes the basics of what he’d later turned into guns and applies it. Not a weapon but a warning. The barrel larger and singular, stubby and short. The ammunition large and laced with phosphor. 

“Not much use as a weapon.” 

He jumps about a foot. Ripley’s right beside him, head tilted towards his shoulder almost as though she’d lean against him. Her metal hand is lifted to her face, a metal finger on her lip. 

“It’s not really a gun, is it, beyond in basic premise? Not a weapon. Different ammunition too,” she says. “Custom in more than just size.”

 _It will do what it’s meant to do,_ he thinks. Externally, he shrugs. 

Ripley tilts her head, lifts a shoulder similarly. “Well,” she says. “At least you’re making things again.”

* * *

The flare gun is disassembled by the end of the day, each piece scattered and hidden about amongst his creations. Ripley likely knows where every fragment is but it doesn’t matter. Anything to slow her down. He might not be able to stop himself making but he can at least make it hard for her to do the same. 

Hard for her to sneak up beside him and _watch_.

“Fascinating,” she says when she looks at his new creations now. He wonders if that means she can see the pieces he’s hidden, or if she’s finding things in the toys to weaponise.

He’s not sure which is worse.

* * *

She doesn’t hover at his shoulder. That’s the worst thing. If she did that he’d know and he’d hide what he was working on, or work on something else. Instead, she waits until he’s fully invested in his work, until his view has narrowed to just what’s in front of him to sidle up to his side. Sometimes he fits the last piece in to find her head leaning on his shoulder, her eyes fixed on whatever he’s created. It’s usually just a toy - not something she can use - but she stays there, watching. On the few days he notices it before she says something, he watches her back, watches her eyes fixed on his fingers as they slot pieces of metal together and twist a spring into place. 

He doesn’t like this intentness, this focused watching. He doesn’t like it at the best of times but knowing now that she’s been listening to him for months...

He wants space. He needs space. It takes all he has not to step sideways now, when he notices her head on his shoulder and that only because he hates the look on her face when she startles. 

It looks, for a moment, like something he doesn’t want to cross.

* * *

“Beautiful,” she says, when he completes a piece.

“Oh, lovely.”

“Now, _that’s_ clever.”

He hates it. He hates when her metal hand slips into his at his side, as though this is _companionable,_ as though this is something they do _together._ He hates when her eyes look at him, look right into his, a combination of cool calculation and deep appreciation.

He hates when her metal fingers touch his cheek, strangely gentle, and she watches him with a smile.

“You’re brilliant,” she says and he’s never hated a compliment so much in his life.

* * *

“You’re so much more than you know,” she says. Her head rests on his shoulder and he pointedly doesn’t look at her. “Don’t you see? How much smarter you are than the rest of your ragtag group?”

Her lips press to his, fierce and determined. He doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t know what to do with this, he doesn’t want this, but her tongue makes a line across his lower lip and his mouth slips open. 

“You’re _better,”_ she says when she pulls back. “You’re like me. Stop trying to be otherwise.”

She walks away and Percy feels sick to his stomach.

* * *

Once, he’d had a crush on her. Once, for one day. The smart, incredible older woman at the Briarwood’s welcome feast, who listened to his explanation of his studies and, more than that, kept up with his words and offered suggestions. Who seemed to know far more than just the basics of the chemistry he was digging into, far more than even the basics of alchemy, who was able to switch from metallurgy to biology at a moment’s notice.

He’d been seventeen. All seventeen year olds make mistakes. Have stupid infatuations.

It was just that his was the woman who tortured him and who helped to destroy almost his entire family. 

When Percy gets back to his room he pulls out the chamberpot and is violently sick.

* * *

She doesn’t stop. Her hand slips into his, her head rests on his shoulder. She does as Vex does, when he makes something she thinks is especially interesting, and presses a kiss to his cheek. He doesn’t know how to respond. What to do, what to say. What can he do when she wraps an arm around his back and leans against his side as he fits together tiny gears for a miniature automaton? He doesn’t dare anger her by shaking her off.

“Brilliant,” she says each day. “Wonderful.”

He hates it. He hates her. He has no way out.

He has always hated being trapped.

* * *

Some nights there’s nightmares. He’s had them for years - they’re nothing unfamiliar. Sometimes the Briarwoods feature but mostly it's Ripley, Anna Ripley, standing over him with hot iron and a chain, a careless smile and a glance of pure intent. 

No malice, that was the worst bit. She did it all as a means to an end, because she could and she needed to.

That _was_ the worst bit. It’s not any more. Instead of nightmares, some nights, other dreams come out of the back of his head, or variants on the nightmares: things that make him scream for entirely different reasons.

Other nights he wakes without a scream, without a startle, and simply shakes in his bed, trying to ignore the directions his brain and his body are taking without him.

* * *

He stops making anything at all. She passes him blueprints instead, and a pencil, and leaves him to sit with those. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t help but make corrections as he looks them over. He loves creating far too much.

He tries to sleep in, to avoid the day, but that doesn’t work. He’ll sidle into the workshop in the wee hours of the morning, wake in the chair in the corner to see Ripley looking over the various things he’s made. Or, one late afternoon, he wakes in his cell to find Ripley standing over him, watching. 

She doesn’t say anything and, after a minute, she leaves.

* * *

He wakes and she’s there. No bloodstained glove, no chain, no burning iron. Just Ripley, without even a gun at her side. 

“I was almost hoping you’d scream,” she says and leaves.

* * *

“You’re brilliant,” she says and he shudders. He’s not sure if she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Her metal hand is gentle on his cheek and the hard movement of his shakes has pressed his face into her fingers. 

She walks forwards, he steps back. He wants to get out, to get away, but he doesn’t have the drive or the strength. He can’t make anything, here, nothing or she’ll find a way to make it a weapon. He can’t say anything because he knows, now, just how well she matches him. She’ll run him in circles and twist him in knots and it’ll be like when he was seventeen all over again. 

He steps back and his legs hit the edge of his bed. Her hand hasn’t left his cheek. 

“Come now, Percival,” she says. He doesn’t think he’s ever been so terrified of a smile as he is of hers. “Can’t you see this is only sensible?”

* * *

“You’re brilliant,” she says. “Like me. You don’t care the dangers of what you make - if you did, would you have made your guns?”

She shifts atop him, moves unexpectedly and he _hates_ being trapped, unable to move. All because of Anna Ripley.

Everything about this is unexpected. He doesn’t know how to respond to any of it. He’s had some experience, he’s not a babe in the woods, but it was once, years ago and less interesting than his studies and he doesn’t want to revisit it here, now, with this woman of all women. 

Her lips find his, her fingers start in on buttons and Percy is too terrified to move.

* * *

Her fingers, flesh and metal both, trail over his skin, eliciting shivers and goosebumps and he’s too shocked to do anything but lay there as Ripley sits atop him.

“I know you,” she says. “Better than anyone.”

She shifts and he groans. She digs flesh fingers and metal into his skin and he gasps. 

She sits atop him and plays him like a fiddle and he doesn’t know what to do.

* * *

When she’s done she clambers off him. Straightens skirts, neatens hair. Looks down at him as he rolls away to face the wall. He’s shaking and he doesn’t have his blankets to cover him with how they got pushed down to the foot of the bed in… everything. He curls to face the wall, presses his face against the stone so hard it hurts, and the only reason he knows Ripley is gone is the sound of the key in the lock. 

* * *

“Percy?” There’s a voice at his door but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t have it in him. “Percy, is that you?”

 _Yes,_ he wants to say but he doesn’t have the energy. 

“Vax! Get over here.”

There’s a comment muffled by distance and then the voice - _Vex,_ he thinks, _it has to be Vex_ \- yells again. Her tone brooks no argument.

“It’s Percy,” she says. “Get him out.”

When the door swings open the twins are silhouetted by the light of the hall and he doesn’t think he’s been so happy to see them since they took him from the prison cell at Jorenn.

* * *

Vex pulls him upright, passes him his coat. He’s on autopilot and he’s almost glad of it. The exhausted part of his mind that wants to scream and run isn’t able to do anything. He pulls the coat on as Vex goes to Grog and when she returns she’s carrying a very familiar armament in her hands. 

“Here,” she says, handing it over. “And ammunition. Come on. We’ve got her in a cell.”

He doesn’t have it in him to say _thank you._ He’s too tired, too drained. But he holds Bad News with all the gentleness he has left and he thinks that Vex may just understand.

* * *

“Here,” she says. Her voice is soft. Vex stands to one side of him, an arms length away. Space enough she won’t be as deafened as he will be if he fires Bad News in these stone halls. Vax is behind her and Keyleth stands to his other side, staff held firm. Her expression is coldly fierce and he doesn’t think he’s seen her like this in a long while. Keyleth isn’t one for summary cold-blooded execution but she’s here all the same after Vex has handed him Bad News and led him to Ripley’s cell.

He looks through the window. He doesn’t need to see the face to know that silhouette but she looks up at him anyway.

“Percival,” she says.

He lifts Bad News, presses the butt into his shoulder. Firing it in these close quarters is hardly wise but he’s far beyond caring at this point. He sees, out of the corners of his eyes, as the twins and Keyleth step back. He tilts his head to the gun, eyes down the scope. He doesn’t need to, at this range, but he wants to make sure. He aims. He sights. He takes a breath.

And with a bang, Anna Ripley is no more.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from [_Godhunter_ by Aviators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoC8OBjs7Iw), which I listened to a very great deal while writing this fic. As in way too much. As in "oh god why have I listened to this over a thousand times." Other songs listened to for this included [_ULTRAnumb_ by Blue Stahli](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-2jNiVK86A) and [_Dämon_ by Joachim Witt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3IEeoCLGMM) for brainscream moments and for trying to figure out how to finish the brainscream bits respectively.
> 
> Comments are ever appreciated or you can come yell at me over on [tumblr](https://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vox Machina worries.

They’d looted the place as they went, sticking every gun they found in the Bag. With Ripley dead there’s much less chance they’ll be used to listen in or find them, though Vex is still determined to get every last one of them checked by Pike and Keyleth and Allura when they get back. 

Keyleth looks shaken and Vex can’t blame her. The last time they’d seen Percy this much of a wreck was before he went after the Briarwoods and this… this, Vex is pretty sure, is something else entirely. She nudges Keyleth gently, though, and the druid snaps herself out of it long enough to make the portal. Percy trails at the back of the order as they file through but even he seems a little more at ease to be back in Whitestone. 

“Come on,” Vax says, striding ahead. “I think we all need some rest.”

No one disagrees.

* * *

Vex drops back to walk beside him. He’s staring at his feet, following Keyleth’s footsteps ahead. Bad News is slung over his shoulder and with his shoulders slumped it almost seems like his gun is the heaviest thing in the world.

She doesn’t say anything. She’s not really sure what to say. No one does well when locked up and he’d been locked up when they’d found him the first time. He can’t imagine it’s got good memories for him, let alone with _Ripley._ Besides which, he’s even more closed off than usual - shoulders hunched, head down. None of the usual attentiveness and interest or, at the least, mildly frustrated boredom. 

There’s nothing. 

No one’s hugged him yet - not even Keyleth. They’ve all been too tense with him gone, too tense trying to find him and get him back.

Gently, Vex reaches to touch his hand to get his attention and he jumps about a foot in the air.

* * *

“Sorry,” he says, when they get inside. Everyone is watching him - not staring but definitely observing. Percy can be jumpy, sure, but he’s not usually. If he’s jumpy, he’s jumpy with good reason.

“It’s all right, darling,” Vex says. She reaches to pat his shoulder but he flinches back from even that. Percy’s always been weird about touch, that much is true. This, though. This is something else. He says a few more words and heads off down a corridor. Vex isn’t sure if he’s heading to his room or his workshop or somewhere else entirely. More likely, she thinks, he’s heading _away._

“Something’s up with him.” Vex would almost smile at her brother stating the obvious.

“It’s Percy,” says Scanlan. “Something’s always up with him.”

“No,” Keyleth says, shaking her head. “This is different.”

“Last time he was like this it was the Briarwoods,” Vax says. “And that’s worrying.”

They got the demon out, though. The Briarwoods are dead. “You think this is similar?” Vex asks.

It’s Grog who answers. “Well,” he says. “She was on ‘is list.”

* * *

He doesn’t join them the next day for breakfast. When they go to check his room it’s empty, bed cold. There’s no sign he slept there. His workshop is likewise empty, the narrow bed there likewise cold and unslept-in. After how he’d been when they’d found him, after what they all remember of going after the Briarwoods, they all look to one another.

“I’ll search the dungeons,” Vax says.

“Town,” says Scanlan.

“Grounds,” says Keyleth. 

They divvy up where to look and head off at speed.

* * *

When they find him it’s not where any of them would expect. Indeed, it’s not even them who finds him but Cassandra.

“I didn’t want to wake him,” she says. “After what you said.”

One by one they peek in the door of the room that had been Doctor Anna Ripley’s and see Percy fast asleep in a chair.

* * *

Keyleth wakes him. After how he’d jumped the day before no one wants to risk startling him and Keyleth has been his closest friend practically since they met. The others back off, spread out down the corridor; out of sight but not out of hearing. 

“Percy?” Keyleth calls. She doesn’t step into the room. His head moves, just a little, but he’s clearly still asleep. She takes a slow single step into the room. “Percy?” she calls again. If anything, she calls more quietly. 

He’s hunched at the table, clearly fallen forward in exhaustion. His head is pillowed on his arms, his glasses smushed into his face. He looks so tired and so very young for a moment that she almost reaches out. Then, she remembers how he’d reacted yesterday. 

Instead, she pulls up a chair, sits a little distance from him, and tries again.

When he wakes, he looks startled but he doesn’t jump. 

“Hey,” she says, sliding a hand slowly across the table towards him. “We were worried about you.”

The look on his face is one Keyleth knows very well. It’s the expression a wyvern pulls when she’s just turned it into a rabbit.

* * *

He doesn’t answer any questions as they gently move him down to the kitchens and get him some food. They spread out around him, a protective phalanx, and Vex isn’t entirely sure that he’s noticed. Or, if he has noticed, he isn’t responding. He just lets himself be herded down. When the plate is set in front of him, he picks at it slowly, barely noticing everyone spread out around the room. For a while Cassandra stays but when it becomes clear her brother has no intention of saying anything she makes her apologies and leaves.

She has a duty to Whitestone, after all, and knows they’ll do what they can for Percy. 

They’re scattered around the room. There’s one by each door - not to stop him leaving so much as to keep too many from coming in. It’s an even guess if Percy’s noticed or cared; he’s still not looked up from the plate he’s slowly picking at. They all know he tends to eat as spottily as he sleeps but this is…

He’s never seemed this completely disinterested before and it worries them all. 

“Percy,” Keyleth says, soft and gentle from the other side of the table. Her hand rests between them, an offering of friendship. “Percy, what happened?”

For a long moment he doesn’t respond. His fork scrapes slowly across his plate, pushing eggs and pieces of fried potato out of the way. It’s clear he’s barely there in the room with them. 

After the longest moment, though, he shrugs. 

“Yeah,” Vex says from across the room. “Bullshit.”

Keyleth’s glance over to her is angry but Vex doesn’t much care. She cares far more about Percy lying to them. 

“Darling,” she says. _“Something_ happened. You’ve not been like this since the Briarwoods. Just like then, we’re here for you. You just have to tell us what happened.”

Percy shrugs again. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s over.”

Keyleth glares before Vex can speak again. Instead, Vex bites her lip so hard it genuinely hurts. 

“Something’s wrong, though,” says Grog. “Do we need to kill someone?”

The laugh Percy gives seems to surprise even him. “No,” he says. “But thank you.”

“You’re not alright,” Vex says. Observation, not judgement. When Percy looks over to her, he nods. Slowly, she nods back. “Get better soon,” she says. “It sucks not having you.”

* * *

“You’re not going to tell us _anything?”_ Scanlan asks. Percy’s picked up the pace of eating - seems to have come back to himself at least a little after Grog startled him into laughing. Mouth full, Percy shakes his head. 

“We are here for you,” Vex says again. “If you want to-”

Percy swallows. “Thank you,” he says. “But I’d rather not.”

Vex knows she’s not the only one unhappy about this, though she and Keyleth might be the only ones present who are worried for sake of Percy more than finding out secrets. 

“All right,” she says. “But if it affects the rest of us-”

“I’ll say.” His eyes meet hers. They’re focused, aware, alert. He’s still clearly incredibly tired but he does, at last, seem to be mostly back with them. 

It’s more of a relief than she’d realised.

* * *

When evening comes, they all meander up to their rooms. Keyleth finds Percy and makes sure he doesn’t hide himself away in his workshop or Ripley’s old room - and that still unsettles them all, that Percy sought that room out to hide in of all the rooms in the castle. According to Cassandra it wasn’t of any importance before the Briarwoods, so Percy’s decision to hide in there can only be from later association. 

Percy seems better, though, if not completely well. He heads to his room with a wave goodnight to everyone still out in the hall and despite worried looks and glances amongst them all they all turn in as well. 

When they wake it’s all of them together because there’s a scream coming from Percy’s room as though someone is being murdered.

* * *

It cuts off quickly, that’s the terrible thing. For a long stretch the scream goes on, piercing and sharp, and then it’s cut off like a noose gone tight. 

They stumble out into the hall. Vex has her bow in hand, Vax and Keyleth side by side with knives and staff, Grog has an axe out and even Scanlan has a flute. It’s Vex who leans her bow against the wall and goes to knock on Percy’s door.

* * *

“Darling?” she calls. “Are you all right?”

There’s a pause and then the sound of shuffling feet. When Percy opens the door he’s in the same longjohns he’d worn for the Slayer’s Take as well as a blanket around his shoulders, pulled tight. She doesn’t think he’s looked this awkward or undefended in a while: usually he’s buttoned up to the neck, almost defensively. 

“Sorry,” he says. 

The others linger in their doorways behind her and she can see Percy’s eyes go darting over each of them. “Go back to bed,” she calls over her shoulder. For a moment Vax seems about to object but something happens - likely Keyleth grabbing his hand - and he cuts himself off. One by one, the doors close.

Vex is pretty sure they’re all listening, though.

“Do you need company?” she asks after several moments of silence.

* * *

She ends up leaving Trinket with him - Percy’s too skittish about touch and too disinclined to talk for her to do any good but Trinket has worked before and Percy makes no objection to the bear joining him in his room. Vex returns to her room and hopes he helps Percy.

Halfway through breakfast, Percy joins them. He’s quiet but he’s there, nodding to Keyleth when she tilts her head in question and offering the smallest of smiles. He sits down in a corner with a plate, his back to the wall, and starts eating.

They don’t watch him but everyone remains aware of his presence. Somehow, they’re still shocked when he says, “I want to go back.”

* * *

“Why?” Vex says, while everyone else is still gaping. “There’s nothing left there but her corpse, darling, we looted everything we could.”

He seems to zero in on that. “Even the toys in the workshop?”

 _“Everything,”_ Vex says. “Who do you take me for? Keyleth?”

Keyleth almost objects, but it’s with a smile. 

“Can I have them?” he asks. “The toys. They’re part of a project.”

Everyone looks at Vex, who shrugs. “Sure. If they’re yours, they’re yours.”

* * *

Percy carries the tiny things in pockets and in hands when the pockets are full. When he gets to his workshop he lays them all out and starts picking pieces out of each of them. He’s not sure if Ripley found them but it seems like all the pieces are there - if she found them, she put them all back. 

“What is it?” asks Keyleth. She’s all the way over by the door and waits for him to glance over before stepping in. Piece by piece, he slots the flare gun together.

“Not a weapon,” he says. “A warning.”

Something in him eases to be able to simply _make_ something at last.

* * *

He spends the day in the workshop. The others drop by a few times - he knows they’re watching him, worried for him. He’d almost be glad of it but he’s so _sick_ of being watched. They all wait outside to be acknowledged and let in, though, which is something. And none of them try to get in his space like Ripley did.

And then, around lunchtime, Vex arrives with a stack of guns.

They clatter onto the table - there’s not so many as there seemed when they were carried, higgledy-piggledy in her arms, but there’s quite a few nonetheless - and Percy looks them over. 

“Scanlan’s practically begging for one,” she says. “But you’re the expert. Besides, I don’t think you have a replacement yet.”

Slowly, Percy goes over the pile. Vex stands in a corner and simply watches. It feels almost like when they were hunting the Briarwoods again, Vex watching and clearly concerned. Some guns he pushes to one side - Retort is out, the one he’d first admired is gone. A few of her simple two-barrel designs are interesting but they don’t have the usefulness he’s after.

In the end the one he takes is the one based on the design he destroyed.

* * *

He hangs Ripley’s gun by Bad News when he goes to sleep that night. It looks odd beside it, all neat tidy lines without decoration compared to the sleek curves and details he’d worked onto Bad News. Very Ripley. 

He turns away and gets ready for bed. Coat onto peg, jumper, shirt. Trousers folded away, underthings and socks into the hamper. His bed is… it’s his and not the one in the cell at Ripley’s. There’s something comforting in that.

Then again, it’s also the one he woke screaming in yestereve and he’s almost certain it’s going to happen again. 

He wishes he hadn’t screamed like that last night but knows it was out of his control. He hates that, that he can’t manage this, and he’s almost tempted to gag himself before sleeping if only to keep the others from worrying. But then, he’s woken them screaming once: they’re not going to just forget that. And, if he doesn’t wake screaming, there’s always the other dreams and nightmares.

He doesn’t know which is better: screaming or being sick.

* * *

He wakes from nightmares. He manages not to scream. He’s pretty certain the others can all see just how tired he is. They’re all being careful, though, watching him from a distance - and he _hates_ it, hates being watched now - and treating him like spun glass. They really shouldn’t be surprised that he’s retreating to his workshop more and more. 

It’s strange. He knows Ripley likely used it at some point while she was here but it’s mostly the same. Some days he finds himself wishing he was back in Greyskull, in the workshop that is _his_ and has never belonged to anyone else. Other days something about the knowledge makes it seem comfortably familiar, just as her room had been. 

He doesn’t know what to do with that, the familiarity and the comfort of it, but when he’s not half-lost in haze, he doesn’t like it.

* * *

He starts making more again. The flare gun is good and even if he hasn’t got a name for it yet it’s something he can use. Not a weapon. A warning. He likes that about it. Not meant to kill. He mulls over calling it Warning and ends up carving it as name into the base of the handle. 

Some days, he wakes from a nightmare with too much energy. Those days he rushes his way down and gets to work with almost feverish excitement - an outlet for all the energy and emotion he doesn’t know what to do with. It feels familiar, like it used to, and not familiar as Ripley did. He prefers it when it doesn’t remind him of her.

This is how, one morning, he arrives in the kitchen with a selection of new arrows for Vex for the first time in far too long. 

* * *

Her face lights up to see them, as it always does. He delights in this, the knowledge that she loves the things he makes, that she’ll appreciate them and use them as they deserve to be used. There’s a couple of explosive arrows, another entanglement, a fresh siege arrow of slightly different design. He was almost tempted to try to make a flashbang arrow, similar to Warning, but decided against it for the time being. 

He lays them out on the table, one by one, and Vex pushes her breakfast away immediately. He likes this - loves this, even - how much interest she has in his creations. 

She seems to smile more with each one and it’s infectious, makes him smile too. Her glee at having new things to play with makes him feel truly happy for the first time in a while, sets ideas sparking off from how she responded to getting certain arrows and he thinks for just a moment _this is going to be a good day_ when Vex’s lips press to his cheek in her customary kiss.

He’s not sure what happens next. A memory flashes up, Ripley, Ripley’s head on his shoulder, her lips on his cheek, her lips on his, her body above his pushing him down and when he finally snaps through them he’s got Vex’s wrist held in a grip so tight he’s sure it’s going to bruise. 

“I- I’m sorry-” he stutters and runs.

* * *

“Percival!”

The voice echoes down the hall and Percy works to stay as still as a statue. 

“Percival.” Vax stands in the doorway, face like a thundercloud. “What in every _hell_ happened back there?”

“If you don’t mind,” Percy says and he’s so glad his voice isn’t shaking. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I do mind,” Vax says, stepping into the room. 

Percy’s hands slowly lower from the mess of cogs and springs he was tinkering with. “Vax’ildan, I know we don’t always see eye-to-eye but-”

“You almost hurt my sister. You said yourself, if it affects us, you’ll tell us. This affects us. _What. Happened?”_

Percy digs his fingers into the table. It’s hard wood, possibly oak, and he can’t make a dent. All things considered, that’s probably for the best. “Nothing,” he says. 

“That was an awful lot of fuss and running for _nothing,_ Percy.”

Vax hasn’t moved any further into the room. Instead, he stays there just in front of the doorway. Percy can see he’s got a knife loose in one hand, ready just in case. He almost wants to laugh: it’s nice that for once they’re not trusting him. 

“Just a memory,” Percy says. “I’d rather not talk about it, Vax, if you please.”

“Is it going to happen again?”

Vax, Percy remembers, tends to speak how he fights. Directly and without much by way of pause, rushing in so the opponent has no time to breathe. He really doesn’t like being on the other end of it.

“No idea,” Percy says and raps his fingers on the table. “I don’t want to talk about it, Vax. Please?”

“You’ll talk about it to _someone._ ” Vax’s expression is stony, his tone final. “Keyleth or Pike or-”

“Vex?”

The grip on the knife very clearly shifts into a far readier position. “Are you in control of yourself?”

Percy could almost laugh. Control, for all he wants it, is something that appears to have been stolen from him with every idea of his that Ripley took.

* * *

Percy stays in his workshop. Doesn’t dare emerge. He doesn’t know what to work on, though - everything he picks up he almost immediately puts back down. He’s no ideas for the guns, doesn’t dare touch the arrows, and anything else requires a precision and forethought that he’s sorely lacking right now. 

He really doesn’t know what else to do, though.

* * *

“Darling?”

The voice rings out at some point in the evening. He’s not sure what time exactly. Regardless, he sets the tools down.

“Percy,” says Vex. She stands in the doorway, waiting. With how she stands, her hands curled around the doorframe, he can’t see her wrists. Some guilty part of him is grateful for that. “Are you all right? I should have thought before-”

“No,” he says. “It’s my-”

“Percy.” Vex’s voice is strangely gentle. “I made you jump before. Twice. I should have realised.”

Percy knows from long watching when it’s not worth arguing with Vex. “Thank you,” he says instead. 

There’s silence awhile. They just stand there, watching each other. Vex’s gaze is searching - not watching purely out of concern but trying to see what the matter is. 

“May I come in?” she asks. “I’d rather like to know what happened.”

* * *

“It was just a memory,” Percy says when Vex has closed the door and picked a seat. “Just a few memories.”

“Ones that weren’t good,” Vex says. “Otherwise you’d not have reacted like that.”

Percy nods.

“You said once,” Vex says. “ _There are things you just forget._ Sounds like this is the opposite problem.”

“Yes,” Percy says. “Yes, it rather is.”

Vex is keeping a measure of distance. She stays just out of arm’s reach, just beyond where she’d usually stand. Percy knows he usually prefers to keep his distance but there are only two people allowed into his personal space. It makes him sad that one of them is now avoiding it but he can’t blame Vex at all.

“Did she torture you again?” Vex asks. “You said before, when she captured you. That you weren’t equipped for torture then. Did she…”

Vex trails to silence and simply watches. In the quiet, Percy links and unlinks his fingers.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. 

* * *

“She… knew me. She understood how I think. And she’d been listening, with Retort. Anything we’d said near it. I slept with that gun under my pillow. And she’d listened.”

He speaks quietly. Slowly. It’s odd to see him stumbling over words like this and worse when she notices that this is by no means all of the story. This is, she’s quite certain, only the part he feels comfortable sharing. 

Percy has always been private. Reserved. Kept to himself and only interjected on occasion. Even when they were trying to get rid of the Briarwoods he’d preferred to stay out of discussion unless he actually had a contribution. She remembers the times they’d had to ask his opinion. 

“When I was there,” Percy says. “Sometimes I would wake up and she would just be standing there, watching.”

There’s a tension in his voice now, a tension in his shoulders, like her bowstring pulled taut. A tension almost like the panic-high of when he’d confronted Ripley in the cells below Whitestone and Vex wonders what it means that even now she’s dead it engenders much the same response. 

Nothing good, she fears.

Percy opens his mouth. Closes it. Blinks slowly. Tries again. 

“There’s more,” he says eventually. “But I’d rather not speak of it.”

Whatever it is, Vex thinks, it’s likely the reason he grabbed her wrist. Slowly, gently, giving him time to move away, she shifts closer and stretches out a hand. Percy’s hands are picking at one another, fingers interlinking, nails picking at skin, nails clawing at flesh. As she reaches her hand out, he parts his own. 

“Then don’t,” Vex says, when his hand reaches hers. “But know we’re here for you.”

* * *

Vex walks with him when the time comes to turn in. She stays just out of arm’s reach but keeps glancing to him, not out of fear but out of concern. She doesn’t _watch_ him though, not in the same terribly close way the others do. It’s a relief in a number of ways that he doesn’t particularly want to explore. 

She waves him off to his room as she steps into hers. Part of him misses the cheek kisses he used to get, another part of him is glad of none. He still has no idea how he might respond. 

His room is dark and cold. He changes into pyjamas with all swiftness and barely bothers putting anything away. The most concession he makes is hanging his shirt over where Ripley’s gun hangs. He doesn’t want to see that tonight, doesn’t want to remember it or her. 

He tucks himself into bed, faces the wall. Curls up like a child, with his knees to his chest. 

Doesn’t matter what he does, though. Dreams are their own domain. 

She’s there. Sleeping or waking, he can’t escape. The old Briarwood nightmares, yes, but they always follow the memories, the arrival, the slaughter, the torture. Ripley always arrives. The dungeons, the chains, the irons in the fire. It’s erratic. Unreal. Never quite what it was. In a nightmare there is no escape, no Cassandra to get him out. Or, if there is, it’s as likely he’ll take the arrows as watch her take them.

Then he’s shaken awake to see his sister’s face.

* * *

“I couldn’t sleep,” Cassandra says. “So I went for a walk. It didn’t sound like you were sleeping well.”

“Nightmares?” Percy asks, pushing his glasses up his face and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. 

Cass’ lips purse a moment. “Yes,” she says eventually. “You’re not the only one with skeletons.”

She’s as matter-of-fact about it as she ever is but it’s something Percy, to his shame, has never much thought on before. She stayed here those five years he remembers. He doesn’t dare imagine the full extent of what she saw, of the Briarwoods, of the deaths, of Ripley. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

He startles when Cass’ hand finds his, but something about the dark, about it being his sister, white shocks of hair at her temples, means he isn’t any more startled than when she woke him. Maybe he’s just been startled enough times for the day. 

“Sometimes, Percy,” she says. “You’re a fool.”

Her hand pats his, once, twice, almost like when Mother would admonish them for some foolish thing or other. 

“Goodnight, Percy,” she says. “Sweet dreams.”

She’s at the door before he remembers to say, “You too.”

* * *

He sleeps without nightmares the rest of the night. He’s not sure why. Maybe it was Cass and _sweet dreams._ Maybe his mind was just too exhausted to make more. He sleeps through until late mid-morning and feels more rested than he has in weeks.

He doesn’t let himself think _today will be a good day,_ though. He doesn’t want to Hex himself. Not again. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are ever appreciated or you can come yell at me over on [tumblr](https://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get better. 
> 
> And then don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter makes reference to a short story Laura Bailey wrote as part of Vex's backstory; you can find it over [Here](https://geekandsundry.com/the-saga-of-trinket-the-surprising-first-meeting-between-vex-and-her-companion/).
> 
> Also, for what it's worth, I do feel bad for what happens in this chapter. I know. There is a reason that, as a WIP, this fic is called "Percy-Ripley Oh God I'm Awful".
> 
> But healing isn't a straight line, pals.

Things settle into a kind of cycle. Sometimes the others go and do jobs. Sometimes Percy even joins them. Ripley’s gun is good, better than he’d thought, and fits into his hands far more comfortably than he’d imagined.

Some days that’s not a good thing. 

He makes more things. After a few days, he makes more arrows for Vex. For a moment her eyes fall to his cheek as though she’d do as she always has, but she catches herself and slowly extends her hand instead. When his hand meets hers, she gently squeezes his fingers. 

“Thank you, darling,” she says.

Percy wishes he wouldn’t flinch at the idea of her lips on his cheek.

* * *

There’s a few jobs. Small ones, small things. Distractions, in some ways, and Percy’s glad of them. It’s easier when he has a distraction - his workshop, conversation with the others, somebody to investigate or someone to kill. Easier by far. Percy joins them on more and more. Rumours of a nest of basilisks in the vicinity, a group of bandits on the roads, something that looks like a case of kidnappings, all rapidly resolved.

It’s reassuring. Clarifying. Even when a wreck, he can do some semblance of good. And, if he can do some semblance of good, he’s not as much of a wreck as he fears. He can make arrows for Vex still, even if she can’t kiss his cheek anymore. He can spend time with Keyleth, even though he still needs warnings before she hugs him. He’s functional. He’s doing all right. He’s going to _be_ alright.

He starts, slowly, to feel a little more like his old self.

* * *

“Are you joining us?” Keyleth’s standing at the door of his workshop, all geared up. “Vax found the leader of those bandit gangs that were stealing from the farm merchants. We’re going to Wind Walk over and deal with it.”

There’s a few things on his workbench - some other variants of ammo for Warning to flare in different colours, some in-progress possible modifications for Ripley’s gun. Something to make it more like his. A few tiny toys because they don’t take much effort to make and he enjoys making them, something not a weapon, not meant to hurt or kill but simply meant to bring joy. He nudges one of them with a fingertip.

“Give me a moment,” he says. “I’ll be right down.”

* * *

It’s a big house that Vax has found. Old, too, and worn. It looks, Percy thinks, like one of the old manor farms that used to dot the region. He wonders what happened to it, to its owners. Most likely, he thinks, the Briarwoods and then claimed by bandits after. 

Vax is already waiting for them, stealthed by the boundary, and it takes Vex to spot him. As they all gather up Vex casts one of her useful little spells over them all and they become very nearly invisible against the surrounding woods. Up ahead, in the yard of the house, a ragtag group of people seem to be keeping watch.

“There’s a way in around the side,” Vax says. “Or we could take out the backup now.”

“Or both,” Percy suggests. “Some of us sneak in and the others wait to stop these fellows from helping when the alarm sounds.”

* * *

Vax and Vex make their way in, followed by Scanlan. Percy would have followed but he’d suggested the plan. It was up to him to make sure it was enacted. 

There’s no sign of disturbance from the house. No alarm seems to sound. After several minutes, Vex’s voice sounds in their ears.

“Take them out,” she says. “We’re all good here. Only a few rooms left to check.”

Percy readies Ripley’s gun as Grog charges in.

* * *

Vex gives them ready directions once the group in the courtyard is either dead or unconscious. They’re most of the way towards the last corridor the twins are clearing when they hear a woman’s scream.

They glance to one another and break into a sprint.

* * *

The woman is still crying but quieter now as Keyleth and Pike stand over her, Pike’s hands glowing with magic. As the gnome’s hands move over the woman’s body, what bruises there are seem to fade. The woman’s sobs turn to hiccups, turn to fast hitching breaths and gradually slow. Vex wishes there was some spell for the other bruises, those someplace other than skin.  
  
Percy still hasn’t moved from his spot near the door. If he were standing guard it wouldn’t be so odd - he’s a sharp eye and good sense. Having him act as watch is not the worst thing. But he, like her, is still and staring, uncertain. His pale face is paler even than usual.  
  
He hasn’t noticed the man’s pooling blood seeping into his boots.  
  
“Percy?” Vex asks, stepping closer. “Are you all right, darling?”  
  
He doesn’t respond. The last time he was this completely out of it was when they’d found him after Ripley. Found him rather like the woman, actually, still and scared and curled on a bed. She almost reaches out but doesn’t want to make him jump.  
  
“Percy,” she says again and he jolts but looks over to her. “Do you need to get some air?”  
  
He looks over the room. Draws in a deep breath. “I-” he says. “Y-yes. Please.”

* * *

They’re travelling back to Whitestone in the back of a cart. Wind Walk already used, no portal spell, so instead: they walk. Vex is almost glad of it but even her legs start to ache after a while and when one of the Whitestone farmers asks if they’d like a lift they all gladly pile into the back of the cart. They’re stuck together like peas in a pod between crates of glassware and sacks of grain but for once the proximity doesn’t appear to be freaking Percy out. Instead, on the long rocking journey, he seems to fall asleep. 

Vax does as well and Scanlan leaning against Grog and Grog for that matter. It’s been a long day. It’s understandable. Even Pike seems close to it on Grog’s other side, head nodding and eyes most of the way to closed. Vex is still worried about Percy’s response to the woman, though, and a glance to Keyleth suggests the druid’s noticed something is up with him as well. 

They stay quiet, though, and the cart creaks onwards towards Whitestone. 

They’re about halfway there when Percy jolts awake with a yelp. The yelp startles Grog which in turn startles Scanlan and Pike, and Vax, always a light sleeper when travelling, already has a dagger in one hand. 

“It’s just Percy,” Vex murmurs. Her hand finds her brother’s. “You know.”

Vax nods, slowly, tucks the knife away. Percy glances over them, all staring at him, and seems to shrink at the observation. 

“Percy?” Keyleth asks. She’s sat opposite him, staff leaning against her side, one end by Percy’s feet. Slowly, as she speaks, she leans forwards and offers a hand. “Are you all right?”

His eyes dart, one, two, three, four, over Keyleth’s side of the cart: Scanlan, Pike and Grog’s eyes are all on him too. One, two, he glances along at them, Vex watching, Vax’s hands slowly moving away from his daggers. 

“Nightmare,” he says, still breathing hard. “Just. Just a nightmare.”

Keyleth’s face is, for once, very directly doubtful of her best friend. “Percy,” she says again, low and even, “Are you all right?”

Her hand stays, slightly extended between them. Slowly, Percy’s gaze drops to it. 

“I’m fine,” he says. “I- I’ll be fine.”

Grog seems about to speak but Pike elbows him with a soft clatter of armour. 

“All right,” Keyleth says. 

There’s something unspoken in Percy’s gaze when his eyes lift from her hand. Some kind of gratitude, Vex thinks, that they haven’t pushed. His hand reaches out, fingertips brushing Keyleth’s palm. 

“Thank you,” he says. 

Keyleth’s smile is small and sad. “Get some rest,” she says. “You need it.”

* * *

Vex arrives quietly at the door to his workshop late that evening. He’s not gone to bed but none of the others came by to check on him or try to get him to join them all in sleep. It’s both a relief and a sadness that they don’t feel the need to do that anymore. A relief: they’re not treating him like glass. They’re letting him take care of himself. They’re not watching, constantly. But then, sadness: he misses their presence, lingering at the edges of his room, making effort to include him more than usual. Vex stands bold as brass in the doorway and he can’t help the smile that creeps up over his face at her presence.

“It’s late,” Vex says. “But I imagine you’re planning on staying down here.”

“Projects,” he says. “And there’s a bed in the corner if I need it.”

Vex waits a moment, casts a questioning glance over the room, but doesn’t step in until he gestures. He likes that, that she, like Keyleth, stays back and lets him dictate what space and interaction he feels like even now. Neither of them charge in like Vax might. 

“The others have all gone to bed,” Vex says once she’s perched on the workbench behind him. Her legs kick lightly against the cupboard underneath, hands braced against the edge. “Keyleth and I told them to leave you be. You napped on the cart; you’ll be fine.”

Percy smiles at his work and a small chuckle escapes. He does like Vex, practical and straightforward and kindly caring in the most direct of ways. 

“I wanted to check on you, though,” Vex says. “And I wanted to check on you when the others wouldn't be around.”

That gives Percy pause. 

“The woman,” Vex says slowly. Quietly. Softly. Speaking as she might when stealthing over snow: desperate delicate steps to try to avoid a noise, to prevent others being startled. A hopeless cause. “That wasn’t a normal reaction, darling.”

Percy doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what to say. Instead he watches, brain stuttering and starting over a hundred possible words as Vex continues.

“I’m not going to ask you to talk about it,” Vex says. She’s not looking at him now. She’s staring at one wall, where his forge tools hang. “You don’t want to talk about what Ripley did and I’m not going to push. I’m not going to ask about your reaction to the woman, either. I don’t need to. I reacted much the same way.”

The words in Percy’s head go from chattering crescendo to utter still silence. Vex is still looking at the tools, her fingers still tapping on the worktop, feet still gently kicking the cupboard doors. 

“You’re not alone, Percy,” she says. “All right?”

* * *

He stares. He watches. Vex turns to watch him back, head tilted, all her archer’s focus on him. He doesn’t mind it, for once. It’s Vex, after all. Vex won’t hurt him. Vex doesn’t watch him to try to hurt him. Vex, who has _been hurt._

She reacted the same way as he did to the woman. The woman locked in that room, with some soft name, he can’t remember what her name _was._ But he remembered how she’d cried out in fear when Vax had unlocked the room, how she’d cried as Pike and Keyleth healed her. He remembers these things around snippets of Ripley, of-

He shakes his head, tries to get the memories _out._ But he remembered that, when they saw the woman in that room. And Vex had reacted the same way. 

Vex who must have had a reason to react the same way. Vex who must also have memories that spurted up in horrible sprays of fear and dread. 

Vex, who has been kind and has been patient and who loves his arrows and who he knows can take fierce and certain care of herself.

When he finds his tongue, she’s almost at the door.

“Vex,” he says. He doesn’t know what else to say. 

She turns to look at him, one hand light on the doorframe. He gestures helplessly. 

“Are you-”

She smiles at him, just a little. Something small and soft and fond. “It was years ago,” she says. “And like you, I killed the one who tried. I’ll be fine.”

“Vex,” he says again as she moves to step away. He doesn’t know what else to say. 

“You’re not alone, Percy,” she says again. “All right? If you need company. If you want to talk. But only if you want it.”

He doesn’t know what else to say to that but, “Thank you.”

For offering. For telling. For being there. Vex smiles at him one more time. “Good night, Percy,” she says and heads off down the corridor.

* * *

Percy doesn’t sleep. Instead, he stays up all night working. Not on what he had been tinkering with before - ammo for Warning, adjustments to his guns. No. He pulls out the spare arrowshafts he keeps a store of in his workshop and starts working down the list of ideas he’s had from the start.

Explosives he’s done before. Entanglement arrows and snares, another siege arrow. He makes one of each before moving onto other designs. Designs he’s had much more trouble with. 

But they’ve been getting there as he’s buried himself in work and few things focus his mind like helping his friends. 

He emerges just after dawn. He doesn’t know whether the others will be up yet, so he takes a gamble and goes to knock on Vex’s door. There’s a grumbling noise then a slight bear growl. Then the door creaks open to reveal Vex not wearing very much of anything under the blanket pulled around her shoulders.

Percy hefts the bundle of arrows. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he says. “And I made you a few things.”

Vex, for a moment, looks very confused. “Darling,” she says. “Have you slept?”

“Not at all,” he says blithely. “Some of these are new. Can I show you?”

Vex seems almost amused now and opens the door wider, pulling the blanket around her into some semblance of a robe with a few quick movements. 

The desk in her room is bare so Percy unrolls the sheet there. It starts with the arrows she knows - explosive, entanglement, snare and siege. “Those you know,” he says, waving a hand. “Then I made a few more. This one is based a little on Diplomacy and a little on your lightning arrows. It has a charge already prepared and should release it on contact. This is one carries a vial of holy oil that should shatter on impact. This one,” he taps a slightly thicker arrow, “once fired should turn into many sharp splinters, like your Conjure Barrage. This one is barbed and has a vial of poison hidden in it. If they try to pull it out the poison releases. This one should ignite if you hold this tab as you fire so you don’t have to use up the Blazing Bowstring. This one is a trick arrow: it releases a splatter of paint. It should make it look like you did actually hit the target when you don’t actually want to _hurt_ the target. This one,” he taps the very last one, with a green glass tip, “has a _residuum_ tip. It should be able to make the most of any spell you cast with or on it. Should. Magic isn’t really my field.”

“I’m glad you’re alright,” he says again, standing back. Vex seems a little shell-shocked at the array or maybe he was speaking too fast. She’s smiling though, from where she’s sat in the chair, her head tilted a little towards him. 

Her hands slowly reach out, then one darts back to keep her blanket-robe in place around her shoulders. Her fingers run gently over each arrow - she knows, now, exactly how careful - or not - to be with his creations. She’s silent as she examines them, looking over each one, checking the balance of the barrage arrow. 

“Percy?” she says, when she reaches the _residuum_ arrow. Her fingers don’t leave the tip as she looks up to him from her comfortable seat. “I love you, darling. Thank you.”

* * *

Percy has gone quite pink, the way he does sometimes when she thanks him for his arrows. Flustered and unused to shows of affection and she can’t help how fond she feels. 

“I- I’m glad you’re alright,” he says again, after a moment. Looking at him, he seems completely and utterly exhausted. 

“Percy?” she says gently. “Do you want to get some sleep?”

He blinks for a long moment. Carefully and slowly, Vex reaches out to touch his hand. His fingers are loose and don’t shake as she takes his hand in hers. Gently, she squeezes. 

“Go on,” she says. “Back to your room. Get some rest. I’ll tell the others to leave you to sleep.”

For a long moment he stays still, fingers relaxed in hers. Then, gently, he squeezes her hand back and nods. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he says again but Vex thinks he’s just saying it at this point, uncertain of what else he _can_ say. “I-” He pauses. “All right. Good morning, Vex.”

She smiles, warm and fond, as he steps slowly away, hand still loosely held in hers. He’s not exactly letting go, so much as their fingers are slowly sliding apart. 

“Good morning, Percy. Get some sleep.”

* * *

It’s late in the day when Percy wakes. He rolls over groggily and the light is dim in a way that momentarily throws him off. Then: he remembers. Tinkering in his workshop, Vex visiting. Staying up all night, making all the arrows. Giving them all to Vex and her ushering him to sleep. The sense of her hand in his.

He flexes his hand a little but it doesn’t feel odd. He doesn’t feel like shaking. He doesn’t feel sick. 

Slowly, he relaxes. It might, just, be a good day.

* * *

He manages to join the others for dinner. Partway through, Keyleth touches his elbow and glances around to make sure the others aren’t listening in. Scanlan’s telling yet another joke, Grog laughing as loudly as only Grog can.

Quietly, Keyleth says, “I saw you, this morning, leaving Vex’s room. Are you-”

Percy pauses. Pokes his food absently with a fork. “I was giving her some new arrows,” he says. “I’d worked through the night on them. Once I’d explained them she told me to go and get some rest. It’s why I wasn’t here for breakfast.”

“Oh,” Keyleth says. Some bit of curiosity and concern in her face eases. “That’s good! Not that it wouldn’t be good if it was something else. Just-”

Percy grins. Keyleth, who never means to offend or hurt. There’s so many reasons he’s glad to have her as a friend and that will always be near the top of the list. “Just arrows, Keyleth.”

“Just arrows,” she says. “New designs?”

Percy spends the rest of dinner explaining and, by the end of it, he almost feels normal again.

* * *

The talk with Vex has helped. Percy knows that. It’s a reassurance, in a way, even if it’s also terrible. Vex is strong and certain and fierce when needs be. She’s _capable_ and for all Vax’s protectiveness of her, Percy’s pretty sure she doesn’t need it. He’s only more certain of it after what she said. Vex, he knows, is more than capable of taking care of herself. 

“It’s how I got Trinket,” she says a few days later. They’re alone outside, testing out a change Percy’s made to the barrage arrow. He doesn’t ask anything for her to say it but Vex is Vex. Perceptive. “It’s why I’m protective of him. I saved myself. I saved him. I just need to keep on doing that.”

She’s sighting down the arrow, minute tremors in her arms as she pulls the bowstring back. He waits for her to fire it, for his notes to be written down, before he speaks.

“Vex,” he says, “You’re the most capable person I know. If anyone can keep Trinket safe for the rest of his life, it’s you.”

* * *

Sometimes, late at night when he really should probably have gone to bed, Cass stops by his workshop. She’d never used to, when they were children - she preferred to explore the servant’s corridors and he’s pretty sure that’s how she survived the Briarwoods - but she does now. Maybe it’s because, past midnight, he’s the only other person awake.

They don’t talk about their nightmares. About the reasons she walks the halls and he locks himself in here and does nothing but work for four hours before dawn. 

But, sometimes, they’ll speak. Sometimes Percy is forcibly reminded of what his sister had said. He’s not the only one with skeletons. 

Despite that, there’s something almost comforting to know that he’s not alone in sometimes hating parts of their home.

* * *

His sleep… stabilises. He’s rarely sleeping the whole night through and he’s certainly not going to bed at the same time as all the others every night but… it stabilises. There’s good days to counteract the bad nights. There’s Vex’s smiles and Keyleth’s tentative hugs. There’s Scanlan’s jokes, even if they sometimes now make him wince. There’s nights where, even if he wakes shaking, it’s easy enough to roll over and go back to sleep. 

But sometimes, nightmares come that do worse than make him shake or scream.

* * *

She’s atop him again. His heart is clenched in his chest, he can barely breathe. She’s atop him, fingers on his skin. He can feel her legs by his, her lips moving over his collarbone.

He can’t move. 

That’s something about these memories. Some parts are so clear and some parts have been excised as cleanly and surgically as her bullets from his flesh. Her hands, metal and flesh both, are on his skin and he remembers how the metal felt with perfect clarity. It pricks over his skin, cold and light as spider legs until it digs in like knives. He remembers her legs tucked beside his. 

He doesn’t remember other things, though. He doesn’t remember the sound her body made when she hit the ground when he shot her. He doesn’t remember what she looked like, dead. And in this moment, in this memory, he doesn’t remember what she felt like around him until suddenly he does.

“Percy,” she says, lips against his neck. “Stay _still.”_

His chest clenches and he chokes.

“It’s quite alright,” she says and her lips are moving away from his neck, slowly pulling back. “It’ll be over soon.”

She pulls back, rises up. Looks down at him. There’s only a lamp to illuminate her face, pale skin, dark hair. Bright, intense eyes. 

But it’s not Ripley’s face. It’s Vex’s.

* * *

Percy wakes and is immediately and violently sick.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments! (... or screams.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the strangest things help.

He can’t look at Vex. He can’t make himself. Any time he does his stomach churns. Instead he becomes avoidant, ducking down other corridors, using the longer routes around Whitestone. He stays in his workshop when he can, door stubbornly shut. 

“Percy?” Keyleth asks. “Are you all right?”

No. Nope. Not at all. But he’s not going to make the rest of them deal with it. 

“I’ll be fine,” he tells her. “I’ve just a few things I’d like to work on.”

He knows Keyleth won’t believe him but she’ll tell the others what he said. Hopefully that’ll prevent any hurt feelings.

Instead, he stays in his workshop, works on all of his projects with no success at all and tries to shut off the ongoing scream in his head.

* * *

He likes Vex. He respects Vex. He should not _dream_ of Vex. He should not dream of Vex in such a way that his mind mixes her up with Ripley. Vex is so many things that Ripley is not: kind and patient, generous in affection adjusted to what each of the team needs. She’s smart, yes, but not arrogant, and above all else she is _kind._ Good, in a way Ripley never was and never could be. 

There’s layers to his thoughts, beneath the ongoing scream. When he focuses at the forge, does nothing but beat out iron into wide thin flats of metal, he can silence the scream just enough to pick out some of what lies beneath. The roar of the fire, the beats of the hammer - it clatters through the layer of screaming like a hammer through ice. He plunges into the deluge beneath and tries to make some sense of it all.

And he hates it.

The forge brings up memories. He’s long come to terms with that. He knows those memories or he thought he did. But now, with what’s happened, he can’t use work to focus and to process as he had before. Can’t push himself into panicked hyperawareness long enough to string thoughts together into a web of sense and reason. Instead, it just becomes panic and even with the screams silenced by fire and forge the memories are a flurry he can’t quite withstand. 

Some things are clear to him though, no matter what else. He hates those memories. He hates Ripley. He hates what she did. He hates himself for doing nothing. He hates that he dreams of it all the same and he hates that his dreams would drag Vex into the mess as well.

He misses Vex too. If he thought he could look at her without being sick he might even try to _talk_ to her about this, now he knows. But the two times he considers it results in breakfast and bile spewed over the coals of the forge.

* * *

He sleeps in his workshop. As he’d said to Vex, there’s a bed in the corner, and when he finally gives up forge and metalwork as a loss he curls up under covers, fingers playing with some of the toy puzzles he’d made before. They move smoothly and tidily in his hands, neat cogs and gears making the legs of a cat move, the twisting tail of a squirrel. There’s a rippling fish too, linked together from small metal rings, and they give his hands something to occupy them as he slips into sleep. 

When he wakes, the fish is still in his hand, the cat and the squirrel fallen to the floor. He’s got a crick in his neck - the bed in his workshop is a tiny narrow thing, barely wide enough to fit him and with a hefty dip to the mattress lest he roll off in his sleep - and as he stretches he feels joints pop and crack.

He feels… better, though. Clearer. 

When he goes to the door to get some air, he sees that someone’s left him a plate of food.

* * *

He keeps a few of the toys in his pockets. The fish is nice to play with and it’s good to take the cat into pieces and put it back together. Simple rote motions that occupy him just enough to calm any rising panic. It’s easier for his eyes to slide past people (Vex) when he has something to distract him and the scales of the fish can pinch his fingertips if he’s not careful in a way that brings a sharp, clear edge to his thoughts.

Keyleth seems worried about him but he doesn’t jolt when her hand lands on his elbow and that seems to ease the frown on her face. Vax eyes him from across the room and Scanlan goes quiet when Percy enters the kitchen before resuming whatever joke he was telling Grog. 

Vex is worried too but when she goes, “Darling? Are you alright?” it takes all he has not to lurch with his stomach.

After a moment he manages, “Fine.” He’s not looking at her, though, and out of the corner of his eye he can see that Keyleth’s frown has returned.

* * *

“He was doing better.” Keyleth’s voice is quiet and certain. “He was- he was _smiling_ again.”

“It’s not always straightforward,” Pike says, as Keyleth paces. “Sometimes getting better means getting worse in another way first.”

“This doesn’t seem like another way though,” Vex says. Pike’s makeshift temple to Sarenrae in Whitestone is not a big place but it’s big enough that she can sit in a corner and watch as Keyleth paces. Vex is starting to think she’s going to carve a groove into the floor with how concerned she is for Percy. Not that the rest of them aren’t concerned as well. As Keyleth had said: he’d been doing better.

“Exactly,” Keyleth says. “This is like when we found him. Flinching at everything, not making eye contact. Percy’s always preferred to stay back a bit from everything but he was almost at that level again. Now it’s right back to the start.”

Pike shrugs. “Maybe something set him off?”

“Yes but _what?”_

“No,” Vex says. “We don’t need to know that.” Or, more accurately, knowing what caused it all, she’s not going to risk the others finding out. She’s little idea how to help Percy when he’s like this, unreceptive to anything she’d usually do to try to help, but she knows that the others finding out what Ripley did wouldn’t help matters. Pike nods.

“We need to find out how to _help,”_ Pike says. She glances up at Keyleth, still pacing, and Vex in the corner. “Maybe we should ask Allura?”

* * *

They consider it but they don’t. Yet. Pike writes a letter and sends it off but they’ve no way of knowing how soon it’ll reach Allura.

In the meantime they need to find, one way or another, something they _can_ do.

* * *

“Percy!” Keyleth’s voice is loud and clear through the door. “There’s a job. Are you gonna join us?”

He pauses at his forge, sets down his tools. “Who’s going?” he asks.

“Everyone.” 

Percy doesn’t know if he can work around Vex yet.

“You’ll be fine without me,” he says. 

* * *

“We’re heading off now.” It’s Vex’s voice and Percy has to pause lest his hands tremble. “We should be back before tomorrow.” There’s something brusque in her tone, something closer to her brother’s. Something not quite angry, not quite upset. Something off. “I’m leaving Trinket with you, all right? Take care of him for me.”

Trinket. There’s the soft snuffling noises that Percy recognises from the bear. Trinket. Vex is trusting him with Trinket. She’s done that twice before out of concern. But this, now- he’s not in a good place now. He’s been avoiding her. 

But also he knows now how she got Trinket. _Take care of him for me._ That’s-

“I will,” he says, before the thought even runs its course. “I promise.”

There’s something that sounds like a sigh from the other side of the door. “Bye, Percy.”

There’s a long moment before he hears the first of her footsteps away. “Vex?” he calls. The footsteps pause. “Take care of yourself. And the others.”

Again, there’s something that sounds like a sigh. “I will,” she says and echoes him. “I promise.”

* * *

When he’s sure the others are gone, Percy pokes his head out of his workshop. Trinket, curled a little dejectedly to one side of the door, looks up with a soft _muurh?_

“Hello Trinket,” he says, reaching out to scratch the bear’s ears. Trinket takes the affection gladly. 

It’s a relief, in many ways, that at least this hasn’t been taken from him. He’s not good at affection. He’s not someone who cares a huge amount for touch. But it’s still nice to be able to when he wants. 

He stands there a while, scratching the bear’s ears. Trinket seems content enough to stay there while he does that. Then, Percy’s stomach rumbles. 

God, it’s been a while since he’s eaten, hasn’t it.

“How does food sound, Trinket? Hungry?”

Even if he’s not, Percy knows, Trinket may well still try, and they make their way down to the kitchens.

* * *

Cass is there. Percy’s not entirely sure what to do with that but he nods at his sister as he fishes a few things out of the pantry and cupboard to make food for himself and make sure there’s something for Trinket. Cassandra just watches, a cup of tea cradled in her hands. 

“I thought you’d be with your friends,” she says eventually, when Percy’s sat down and tucking in, Trinket likewise digging in with gusto. 

“I- ah- no. No.”

“Because you’ve been avoiding them?” Her tone is even, her gaze is not. Percy doesn’t think he’s seen a gaze as disapproving but for Mother’s all the times he tried to avoid attending a feast. 

“That’s not- I-”

_“Percy.”_

“I’m not avoiding them,” he says. “I just. Needed space.”

“Which you got by avoiding them.” Slowly, gently, Cassandra sets down her cup. It’s an old one, a battered lump of clay roughly moulded into shape. Percy thinks it’s one of Julius’ attempts from when he was being forced to learn art. It still has the splash of blue glaze on the rim against the sunburst yellow. “It’s not fair,” Cass says. “Not to them and not in general. I don’t get to hide from the duties you dropped on me. You don’t get to hide from the duties you chose instead. They’re your friends, for Pelor’s sake. And you’ve spent the better part of a week hiding in your workshop from _everyone.”_

What is it, Percy thinks, about sisters and being _right?_ Cass has a knack for talking painful sense at him and making her point in ways he can’t disprove or avoid. He really doesn’t like it but there also really isn’t anything he can say. 

“I know something happened with Ripley,” Cassandra says. “I don’t know what. But I spent five years stuck here with her so I’m sure I can make some guesses.” She sighs very slightly. “She was a horrible woman,” Cass says. “And I don’t doubt you’re hurting. But so am I. So are your friends. We still keep on going. You can’t just remove yourself from reality, Percy. It doesn’t work.”

Percy doesn’t doubt she’s speaking from experience.

* * *

He’s in the kitchen still when the others come back. They clatter in, chattering loudly enough that if he wanted to escape he could. Instead, he waits. Cassandra was right: he can’t avoid everyone forever even if it feels like the best option. Trinket immediately rises and ambles over to Vex, bumping up against her shoulder and trying to lick her face. Like usual, she doesn’t let him, but as ever Vax lets Trinket instead. Percy wonders, for a brief moment, if Vax knows why Vex has Trinket and why the bear means so much to her before deciding it unlikely. Vax is overprotective and Percy doesn’t think he’d let Vex go anywhere alone if he knew.

“Percy,” Keyleth says, smiling. Looking so relieved to see him he feels genuinely guilty at avoiding them all. “Feeling better?”

“A little,” he says and it’s true. Staying in the workshop hadn’t helped but a little air, some time spent with the easy company that is a giant armoured bear, that has.

Vex is smiling a little too, half pushed over by Trinket demanding ear-scratches. For a moment he manages to watch her, join the smiling, laughing atmosphere of everyone home safe and well. Then the memory of the dream, twisting and awful, one thing and then another, rises.

“I should go,” he manages, before he bolts.

* * *

Allura arrives on a cold and foggy morning and Vex doesn’t think she’s been so happy to see anyone in her life. She grabs Pike from the makeshift temple, beats her fist on Keyleth’s door, aims quick kicks at the doors of Grog and Scanlan and Vax and bolts downstairs so fast it feels like flying.

She doesn’t stop by Percy’s workshop. Not after how he’s been responding to her this past week. 

* * *

The others are glad to see Allura too. They have a long sit down and catch up in the kitchen: hear about Gilmore and Kima and a myriad others. There’s so many stories to be told as well and most of the morning is gone before Vex manages to take Allura aside. Grog and Scanlan off into town, Vax and Keyleth and Pike all wandering off in their own directions. Vex promises to show Allura to some rooms but as they all file towards the door she moves her seat closer. 

“Something’s the matter with Percy,” Vex says as the others filter out. Keyleth glances back at her and Vex nods at the unspoken question. Keyleth’s hand drops to Pike’s level, makes a thumbs up for Pike alone, and the door slowly closes. “I wanted- you’ve seen more than we have. You’re smart. Do you- do you know what might help?”

Allura looks confused and uncertain. “What’s the matter?”

“He was-” _He was tortured,_ Vex is about to say but then that would require context. She pauses, orders her thoughts. “Percy’s family was killed, years ago, by the Briarwoods. Remember when the Briarwood stuff happened?” Allura nods. “As well as the Briarwoods, there were people who helped them, some soldier, a professor, and this woman, Doctor Ripley. We found her when we took Whitestone but she escaped. Percy… did not- he didn’t take seeing her well. And then about… almost two, three months ago, we were on a job and Ripley captured Percy. She was- I don’t know. She had some kind of weird obsession with him and his guns. But he was there for weeks before we found him. She hurt him. He won’t tell us how or why.” And that’s true and Vex doesn’t feel even a little bit guilty hiding what she _does_ know and _has_ figured out. “He was doing better. Talking to me and to Keyleth and a little more to the group. He wasn’t jumping when we so much as touched him. And then, last week, something happened and now he’s locked himself in his workshop and though he’ll talk a little to Keyleth, he won’t talk to most of the rest of us, and-” 

_And he won’t look me in the eye at all._

She doesn’t say it, though, and trails off, tense with worry and with upset. She hasn’t let it out, yet, how much Percy’s avoidance has hurt. Not with the team. Because if she did then she might just end up having to explain certain things to Vax and she knows her brother and how overprotective he is and she’s not about to see her brother be wrongly angry at Percy nor at someone she has already killed. She’s not let that out, yet, but she feels almost as though she might, explaining all this to Allura.

“We’re worried,” she says instead. “So, so worried, Allura. This isn’t like him. Percy’s reserved, usually, but he’ll join conversation and answer questions. He’s barely doing that now.”

Allura’s hand cups her chin, her thumb strokes her lip. “I’ve seen that before,” she says. “It’s not magic. Just how people respond to bad events.”

“We know,” Vex says. “We know that. But we don’t know how to _help.”_

Allura smiles, soft and sad. Gently, she reaches out a hand to touch Vex’s elbow. “You’d be better off asking Kima,” she says. “She’s been tortured several times and she’s come out the other side none the worse for wear. She’ll be able to help. She’s very good at finding ways to work out uncomfortable feelings.”

Vex remembers rather clearly the mess that had been left of the duergar torturer when Kima was done with him.

* * *

Kima arrives a few days later. Grog is overjoyed to see her and they spend a good few minutes mock-sparring before Kima comes in and catches up. 

“Allura said you’ve got trouble on your hands,” Kima says, mug of ale in one fist. “That something’s up with Percy.”

“Yeah,” says Grog. “He’s been acting weird since we found him and let him kill Ripley but he went _really_ weird again recently.”

Kima looks lost. “No idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Ripley was the woman who tortured him back when his family was killed,” Keyleth says. “And she captured him a few months ago. We found him and we got him out and he killed her. But he’s not doing well.”

“Ah,” says Kima and drains her mug. “I know just what he needs. Grog? Do you have a training room somewhere here?”

Grog’s face lights up.

* * *

No one is entirely sure how Kima manages to pry Percy out of his workshop but by the time Grog is shoving everyone out of the training room - “Come on, he’s weedy. Don’t embarrass him.” - Kima returns, Percy in tow.

He looks some mixture of confused, bemused, and utterly shellshocked, and it’s rather easy for Kima to bandage his hands before she does her own.

* * *

“Come on,” Kima says, tapping one palm with two fingers. “Punch me. You’ve got a lot of emotions, now make it anger.”

Percy’s still hesitant, no matter what she might say. 

“Come on! You can be impatient. You can be angry. Bahamut’s Scales, you shot my shackles off me because you were impatient.” Kima’s hands are up, ready for a punch. “Find that. Punch me. You’re not going to hurt me, I’m made of fuckin’ iron.”

Percy doesn’t know if he can. He’s upset, mostly, and sad and angry at himself because he didn’t do anything and he should have and now he’s hurting in ways he doesn’t fully understand and he’s avoiding Vex which seems to be upsetting her and he doesn’t want to upset Vex and how he’s acting is upsetting Keyleth too and he can’t _tell_ Keyleth about any of this, because it wouldn’t be fair-  
  
Percy throws a punch. It’s kind of a shitty punch. 

Kima, however, grins as brightly as a sunrise. “Good,” she says. “Again.”

Percy finds the anger again and punches. This time it actually hits with some kind of impact. Kima’s smile broadens. 

“Good! Again!”

He punches. He punches. His stance shifts, his punches become more certain. Kima starts moving, circling, shifting her hands to take each blow. Her smile just gets bigger and bigger, until Percy misses and he swears in frustration.

“Good,” Kima says and it’s almost a snarl. “You’re angry. You’re pissed off. Something has fucked with you and yours and it’s made you _angry._ How angry are you?”

Percy doesn’t answer. Percy throws another punch. 

“Good! You’re angry. You’re pissed as fuck. Now fucking _admit it.”_

Percy’s long past caring. He punches again. 

_“Admit it.”_

“Yes, all right, I’m angry!” he says and it’s almost a snarl as he punches. “I’m really _fucking_ angry.”

“There we go.” Kima’s grinning. Relaxed. Her hands move to take the next two punches he throws. “Good. Now. _Why are you angry?”_

There’s so many answers to that. So many. He doesn’t know where to begin. He’s angry at his brain for bringing up memories he can’t control. For bringing up emotions he can’t tamp down on. He’s angry at his friends, sometimes, for watching him like he’s a stranger. He’s angry at the Briarwoods, always, for what they did. At Stonefell, at Anders. He’s angry at his dreams and he’s angry at his nightmares, he’s angry at the gun he wields because he hasn’t had a chance to make one that’s not been touched by Her. He’s angry at Her, too, and he hates Her. Ripley. He fears Ripley, even now, but she’s dead and he can hate her too. He still feels drawn to her, though, and he hates that more. That, once upon a time, he’d thought she was brilliant and wanted to spend the whole evening talking to her. 

And he’s angry at himself because he didn’t try to stop her or fight her or do _anything._ Because once, a long time ago, he’d thought she was the most brilliant person he’d met.

Kima’s hands grip his fists the next time he throws them. “Percy,” she says and her eyes are bright and fierce and her grin is almost feral. _“Why are you angry?”_

“Because I’m an idiot,” he says, between panting breaths. “And I should have fought her and I didn’t.”

Grog’s voice rings out behind them. 

“That,” he says, “Is the stupidest thing I’ve ever fuckin’ heard. And I’m _me.”_

* * *

Kima is the one who grabs Percy’s elbow as the adrenaline starts to drain away. “Come on,” she says, brusque and efficient. “Come on. Allie wouldn’t be happy if I let you collapse here.”

“Here,” Grog says, “I got ‘im.”

Grog’s great hands come down on Percy’s shoulders and practically frogmarch him to a bench in the corner. 

“You ok?” he says. “You were saying some daft stuff there.”

“Kima-” Percy starts and Grog waves a hand. Kima, seeing he’s in Grog’s hands, is stepping back.

“I know she was asking you shit but _you_ were saying daft shit. You’re angry at yourself? You shoulda fought back? That lady scared you shitless! What the fuck were you gonna do?”

Percy pinches his nose, pushes his glasses up and rubs his eyes. “Try?” he says. 

“Yeah,” Grog says, shaking his head. “No. Shoulda fought back, what kind of-” He cuts himself off. “You know what I did, when my uncle and the herd beat the shit out of me? I _stopped fighting back._ Some shit you can’t do shit against, so you _don’t._ You stop and you play fuckin’ dead because some beasts are brutal, right, so you play dead while they sniff around and then when they’re gone you fuckin’ leg it, yeah? That’s what I did and that’s what you did. And then later you can make a trap and kill them dead. Which is what I did with you guys in Westruun and which you did with us, right, when we found you, caught her, stuck her in a cell and gave you your gun. _BOOM_. She’s dead, you’re alive, you win.” Grog’s finger jabs him in the chest.  
  
Percy smiles wryly. “Doesn’t feel like winning.”  
  
Great grey hands fly into the air. “Why the fuck not? You’re alive, she’s dead. She’s probably rotting in some hell somewhere and you’re home with us. What’s not to like?”

Percy scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s not just being home,” he says. “That’s great. Much better than being there. But sometimes it feels like I’m still _back_ there.”

When Percy looks up, Grog is watching him, silently. Slowly, the goliath nods. “Yeah,” he says. “I know what that’s like. But you’re _not_ back there. You’re never gonna be back there. We won’t let that happen.”

Grog stays put, silent and staring. Percy doesn’t know if he wants a response. He doesn’t think he has one. 

“Here,” Kima says, passing him a mug. “Get some water in you.”

Percy takes the mug but doesn’t drink. 

“Oh-kay,” Kima says and turns on her heel. “I’m going. He’s your problem now, Grog.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Grog says but he’s not watching Kima. His eyes haven’t left Percy. As Kima leaves the room, Grog moves and sits beside Percy on the bench.

The mug is cold in Percy’s hands. Slowly, Percy lifts the mug and drinks. He’s thirstier than he thought. Beside him, Grog doesn’t move. He just sits there, arms crossed, a huge solid form. 

“Feeling better?” Grog asks. “Like less of an idiot?”

“I’m not sure,” Percy says. “You tell me.”

Grog doesn’t. Instead, Grog says, “Sometimes, shit sucks. Like really, _really_ sucks. And sometimes you’re gonna feel like shit. But what Ripley did?” Grog shakes his head. “Not your fault. Our fault, ‘cause we didn’t find you quick enough. Her fault, ‘cause she did it. But you just survived.” There’s a long pause as Grog looks down at him. “‘m glad you survived.”

* * *

It takes him the day before he feels able to apologise to Vex. Takes him another before he has a suitable arrow. It’s not as fancy or as many as the eleven he made before but it _is_ new and he thinks that should count for something.

“It’s a flare arrow,” he says. “Like a flaming arrow but it should burn for longer. With the chemicals used, it should burn even in water, once lit.”

Vex is watching him and she hasn’t moved to take the arrow.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I- I don’t know how to tell you why I was acting so weirdly. But I am sorry.” Vex is still watching him, quiet. There’s a slight downturn to her mouth, a slight dampness to her eyes. Percy is beginning to realise he may have genuinely hurt Vex’s feelings when he avoided her. “Was it you who told Kima?” he tries.

“Allura,” Vex says quietly. “She told Kima.”

“Thank you,” Percy says. “I- I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t- I-” He tries his best to marshal his thoughts but Vex is still just _standing_ there and she hasn’t taken the arrow. “It’s not your fault I’m an idiot,” he says eventually. 

“You’re not an-”

“I think Grog would disagree with you there.” Vex doesn’t say anything but the edges of her mouth are no longer turned down. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I know that by avoiding you I hurt your feelings and I’m sorry for that. I’m an idiot. It’s not your fault. You’re lovely and you’re my favourite and if you want to punch me you can.”

The last makes Vex chuckle and he doesn’t think he’s heard a sound as lovely in weeks. 

“I’m not my brother,” she says and finally takes the arrow. “Thank you, Percy.”

She doesn’t kiss his cheek but she smiles as though she’d like to.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference the puzzle toys, especially the cat that can be taken apart, are based on some plastic puzzle toy horses I was given as a child. There's something very calming about taking them apart and putting them back together.
> 
> Please leave comments!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to find a new normal.

Percy emerges. He’s not out and about every day and he still spends far more time than they’d like in his lab but he emerges. He looks them in the eye, he smiles. Some days he goes to the training room with Grog and when they’re done he leaves with bruised and bloodied knuckles. Grog seems to find it something to smile about, which might just be because violence but Percy emerges seeming… lighter. 

Whatever it is that Kima suggested seems to work, at least somewhat.

He makes more arrows for her too and delivers them with a smile. He still recoils just a very little when she glances to his cheek - Vex doesn’t think he’s even entirely aware he’s doing it and even she can barely spot it but for the fact she knows to look for it - but he takes her hand when it’s offered and always seems oddly hesitant to let go. Vex doesn’t mind. It’s good that he now wants contact rather than jumping a foot in the air.

He’s hesitant but he’s back.

* * *

“Are you going to talk about it?” Keyleth asks. “What happened?”

Percy glances over, hands still fiddling with the small deer he’s working on. He’s using her antlers for the model and Keyleth is as ever more than happy to help. It’s yet another one of the reasons he likes her: her presence is pressureless, observant but not expecting much beyond a little conversation and company. Even this question doesn’t have much weight - it’s if he  _ will, _ not if he’s going to right now.

“Do you mean about what happened with Ripley?” he asks, “Or what happened more recently?”

Keyleth shrugs. “Either,” she says. “Whichever you’d prefer.”

It takes Percy a little while to find words. He takes pliers to the wire, shaping the antlers just right as he thinks. “I- no,” he says eventually. “I’d rather not - about either. Just- just know that what Kima has said has helped and that I’m doing better.”

The smile Keyleth gives isn’t the tentative worried thing she’d shown when he’d been avoiding them but something altogether brighter and broader. These - the smiles Keyleth gives, complete and utter expressions of joy - are another reason he likes her so. “That’s good,” she says, before her smile fades a little. “But- if it happens again. You withdrawing and avoiding us-”

Percy shakes his head. “It won’t. Unless- I’ll do my best not to. When you all were out and Vex left Trinket with me, Cassandra had a word.” He sighs and shakes his head again. “What is it with sisters being  _ right?” _ he says. “Regardless. She had a point. I- I can’t promise I won’t. But if I do it means whatever caused it is worse.”

Keyleth’s expression is considering but calm. He hopes she’s thinking as he has - that if he avoids them again then they have far more reason to worry. Carefully, she stretches out a hand. Percy takes a moment to set down his pliers, to flex his fingers, before taking it. Her fingers are soft and gentle - almost pressureless.

“I hope it doesn’t happen again,” Keyleth says. “We were all so worried about you.”

She smiles again when he gives her the finished deer.

* * *

“It was a dream,” he tells Vex, one evening. It’s late, very late, and the others have all gone to bed. “The reason I avoided you all. I thought I was used to the nightmares, but that one-” He falls silent. He’s not even entirely sure why he’s saying this: the urge to had simply surged up as he was fitting together the mechanism on the siege arrow because he trusts Vex and he knows Vex and if there’s anyone he owes an explanation to over what happened, he thinks, it’s her.

Vex stays where she is, perched on the stool she’s claimed. It’s the one Keyleth usually takes when she comes to help him and it sits just a little beyond the edge of his desk - just beyond any potential blast radius - ready to be pulled closer when needed. There’s a blanket tugged around her shoulders, not because it’s cold but because it’s late, and he can see the tiredness in her face even as she shoves it out of the way in a burst of focused concern. 

“I take it,” she says slowly, “that rather like what Ripley did, this isn’t something you particularly want to talk about.”

His nod is more of a jerky twitch but Vex doesn’t push. She doesn’t need to, after all. She already has some idea of what Ripley did and what it can do to one’s head. She, more than the rest of them, would be able to guess why a dream might make him avoid them all.

“All right,” she says. “Percy? Thank you.”

His shoulders relax. Hands, paused and tense around the arrow, relax as well. It comes together with ready ease and he lifts it from the table and offers it to her.

“It’s perfect,” she says, examining it. Her eyes are gentle as they lift back to his face. “Thank you, darling.”

It’s even more impulsive what he does next but he doesn’t quite care enough to rein it in. He leans forward, quickly and before he can stop himself, and presses a kiss to Vex’s cheek. 

When he withdraws Vex’s eyes are a little wide. Not startled but perhaps a little confused. Then, even as he watches, she smiles. 

“Love you, darling,” she says in the same tone of fondness she has every time she’s kissed his cheek in the past. The same warm tone she uses for all the team, the same warm tone he’s missed so much these past few months. 

Percy smiles so widely and so unexpectedly his cheeks hurt.

* * *

It becomes a new part of normal. The others seem a little confused at first but it’s Keyleth who twigs it, even before Vax.

“Because you freaked out,” she says. “Vex can’t. So you-” They’re sat downstairs, just discussing, and Keyleth is leaned forward on the table, head propped up on one hand. “That’s sweet,” she says. “I know I’ve said you can be awful but- that’s sweet.”

Percy doesn’t really know how to explain that it just seems like  _ sense. _ Vex can’t kiss his cheek anymore. They both miss it. Obviously the best solution is that he kiss hers instead.

Keyleth is smiling though, with a slightly knowing look that Percy’s not entirely sure he’s comfortable with.

* * *

Ease returns, if slowly. It helps that he was never the most affectionate: there are fewer expectations to meet when it comes to what counts as normal. Keyleth’s hugs are a strain to take, some days, but a welcome one all the same. It’s a test to see if he can and he likes the knowledge of his success. Further: it’s good to know that Keyleth sees him as being much the same as ever. Someone awkward with hugs, yes, but who will accept them from her if no one else. It helps, on the days that the hugs startle him, that when he comes back to himself Keyleth seems blithely oblivious. Likely, he thinks, she assumes it’s the same shock and startle he always has when she hugs him - momentary and fleeting before he returns it. 

And Keyleth, he knows, will not hurt him. Even if they disagree on occasion neither of them truly wants to hurt the other. That is as much a comfort as his workshop, some days.

Scanlan’s jokes still make him wince on occasion but he gets better at hiding it. Vex seems to have taken note of that, as well, steering conversation around it, and no one but her seems to have noticed his response. Or, if they have, he thinks they probably attribute it to how awkward he’s always been. He’s glad of that. It’s enough that Vex knows; he doesn’t know what he’d do if the others started to guess.

Try to hide in his workshop again, perhaps, until Cassandra reminds him that he shouldn’t.

_ Ugh. _

* * *

He still hasn’t named Ripley’s gun. He’s really got no ideas for it either, but he can’t keep calling it Ripley’s gun. It’s not. She’s dead and she never got a chance to use it. It’s built from his design. He’s spent a few scattered days carving embellishments in, as well, to mark it more clearly as his, but a name still escapes him.

“The List, Bad News, Retort, and Warning,” he says to Scanlan - far and away the wordiest of the group. “But I’ve no clue for this one.”

“You could let me have it?” Scanlan suggests before laughing. “No, I know you won’t. I don’t know what to call it! Why would I know? Just keep using it. I’m sure you’ll find a name eventually.”

Percy knows he’s got a point but it still leaves him more than a little unhappy.

Ripley’s gun. He doesn’t like keeping traces of her around. A name at least would make it  _ his. _

A small part of his mind reminds him that he’d named Retort. It hadn’t stopped that gun being used against him.

* * *

“It feels weird not having you out there with us.” Vex’s voice is quiet and she’s perched not on Keyleth’s stool, this afternoon, but on a worktop. He understands the desire for high places, a vantage point. They’re both ranged attackers, after all. You get a better view of the target when you’re above and it’s harder to be scared of someone you tower over.

He doesn’t fear Vex though, even if she’s now a head and a half taller than him by virtue of her perch. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “You know-”

“It’s like when you were with her,” Vex says. “When you’re not with us.”

He looks up at that and over to Vex. She’s watching him the way she’s taken to watching him of late: observing but pressureless, without expectation, and he finds he doesn’t mind her gaze on him as he does the others. For all she’s by far the most perceptive of the group, it never feels even slightly similar to Ripley’s constant creeping watchfulness. Maybe it's because he knows what to expect when it comes from Vex. Knows her to be watchful and knows that she’ll keep some distance if asked. For all Vex is an archer it was Ripley’s gaze that felt like arrows, piercing and ever-present. Vex’s, if it’s anything, is air.

“I’m not,” he says softly. “I’m right here.”

_ Are you, though? _ He sees the momentary question on her face. It’s a fair call. He’s not sure of it himself, sometimes. Like he’d said to Grog,  _ sometimes it feels like I’m still  _ back _ there. _

“The first day back,” she says instead. “You went to her old room.”

He’d forgotten that and the reminder is enough to startle him to stillness.

“Percy,” Vex says gently. “Dear?”

“I- I’ll try to be here,” he says against the whine in the back of his head, a high drone like mosquitoes. “And I won’t- I don’t want to go back to that room. I-”

“Darling-”

“I don’t know why I went there,” he says in a rush. “I don’t. And I don’t know why sometimes her gun is a comfort and sometimes it’s the worst thing in the world. I-”

“Percy.” 

In his panic, he hadn’t noticed her hop off the surface and take two steps closer. She’s just out of arm’s reach but she’s closer than she was and her hand stretches towards him. 

“It’s all right.” His hand finds hers and her grip is sure and certain, a strong anchor. “It’s all right.”

For a long while nothing is said and he grips her hand like a lifeline.

* * *

Vex’s presence is reassuring. A reassurance. There’s layers to it and sometimes, working at his forge, he likes to try to piece out and apart the reasons of it before slotting them back together into simple sense. It’s a kinder exercise for his mind than bringing up older memories as a driving purpose and even if he’s not sure if he deserves the kindness, he thinks he needs at least a little now. Some evenings she sits with him in his workshop, just watching him work. Never at his shoulder, never at his side. Always perched a little distance away, on a stool or a worktop and asking him occasional questions so he never forgets she’s there. He’s not sure if she’s doing that on purpose - if she’s figured out how Ripley would wait for him to be focussed before sidling up even though he’s never said a word of it - or if it’s just Vex herself.

He thinks it’s the latter, though, and he’s glad of it. Her curiosity is gentle but gives him a second focus than just his work. It keeps him present, in a way, rather than letting rote work cause his mind to summon up old memories as distraction. 

* * *

“Why do you make them?” she asks one evening. “The toys.”

She’s the bear he made her in one hand as she asks, thumb stroking over its armoured head, so he knows she’s not asking in judgement. She’s not even looking at him as she says it, either, focussed on the bear and its tiny details. He knows those details very well, having worked each and every last one in just for her. He lets a slow breath out as he tries to twist a wire into place in its mechanism.

“Oh, there’s… many reasons,” he says. “It’s- weapons and tools are one thing. My guns, your arrows and the like. But sometimes… I don’t want to only make things which destroy. Or even with things with a purpose, really- I- any purpose can be twisted. Toys simply  _ are. _ They make people happy. They’re- they’re-”

_ They’re something she couldn’t turn against me. _

“They’re good,” Vex says softly. “The toys.” When he looks over she’s smiling gently. 

“They can’t be made into weapons,” he says, looking at her. There’s something calming to say it aloud, even if it’s not all of the truth. Something calming, too, about saying it to Vex and knowing she’ll understand. 

Vex’s smile turns to a grin. “Well,” she says, lifting the bear. “I’m sure if I threw this at someone’s head it might do a  _ bit  _ of damage.”

He laughs just a little at that. Simple, straightforward, no great leap - and a  _ joke _ too, accepting what he says and teasing without malice. Ripley, he knows, never would have seen even that use - she thought such things useless and a waste of time. “Maybe,” he says. “Maybe. But mostly, they’re just there to bring joy. I like that. I’d like- I’d like to do that more. Bring joy.”

He thinks, from Vex’s smile, from how she doesn’t let go of the bear he made her, he might be having some success there.

* * *

She stays with him more. Sitting in his workshop ‘til they’re both of them yawning. Once, he’d have minded the company. Were it anyone else, he’d mind the watching.

But Vex is different. Slowly, Percy is starting to think that she always has been. Keyleth is his dearest friend, without a doubt, but his ease with her is a different thing entirely to the comfort of Vex’s presence.

Some evenings, when both of them are yawning, they walk back to their rooms side by side. Sometimes they talk and other times it’s silent. It never feels awkward though. Never feels wrong. Never feels like Ripley leading him to cell or to workshop or to eat. It’s comfortable and he’s glad that his waking mind, at least, has no trouble distinguishing Vex from Ripley.

He just wishes his sleeping mind would understand that too.

* * *

“Your nightmares,” Vex says softly one evening. They’re walking slowly back upstairs, Trinket’s head occasionally butting between them for scratches, smelling of conifer sap and leaf litter from their post-dinner walk. “You’re not waking us anymore but-” She trails off and doesn’t look at him. “You still have them,” she says, “Don’t you? Whatever you’re doing with Grog is helping but-” She waves a hand. When Trinket next butts against them her hand comes to rest on the bear’s head. “I’m not asking you to tell me,” she says. “Just-”

There’s words unspoken in the silence but they’ve both long been adept at reading between one another’s lines. 

“Sometimes,” he says. “Not always. Not as often.” 

He feels like he should say more but doesn’t know what. He’s not going to tell her of his nightmares, of the terror they bring or what they’re about. Instead he rests his hand on Trinket’s head, a distance from Vex’s, and scratches the bear’s ears. 

“I fight with Grog,” he says. Vex, he notes, doesn’t seem terribly surprised to hear it and he smiles. “And that helps. All the, uh- they bring up a lot of things I don’t want to think about, or remember, or dwell on. And, ah- controlled violence helps with that.” They’re almost back to their rooms, no sounds but soft ones - the crackle of the wall sconces, their breathing and their footsteps, the scratch of Trinket’s claws on the flagstones - to disturb. “They’re bad,” he says eventually. “The nightmares. But- is it terrible to say I’m almost used to them?”

* * *

Ripley’s gun stays on it’s peg. He doesn’t go out enough to use it - a combination of his nightmares and a general lull. He could set it beneath his pillow. There’s a safety mechanism to ensure it won’t go off at random and it’s not as though he hasn’t slept with other, less safe, guns beneath his pillow. Not just Retort but the List too, some nights, and even knowing that Ripley spied on him with one the old comfort of the other makes the memories not as terrible as they might be. 

And Ripley is dead. Even if she’d bespelled every last one of the guns she made and that they all took, she can’t learn a single thing. She’s dead. It’s a glad thing to remember that, some evenings.

The gun is a cold comfort in his hands. He’s never entirely sure what to do with it if they’re not in the middle of a fight. It’s not the pepperbox, half made in haze and dreams, the product of grief and loss and anger and Orthax. A gun as bonded to his soul as made by his body and one he could bear to be apart from about as much as he could either of those. It’s not Retort, either, something he kept as close as he could lest the myriad threats of the world try to hurt him and his. 

It’s a cold comfort. Having the List only put him and his into harm’s way - threw his soul and others into peril. Having Retort opened them all up to be spied on. He’s got no delusions. This gun won’t save anyone or anything even wielded by the most careful hands in all the world. All it can do - all it was designed to do - is kill. 

But it’s his now. It’s based more on his design than most all of Ripley’s other guns, a product of his mind as much as hers. A child of them both, he almost thinks, before bile rises. 

It’s his gun. His and his alone, with her dead. 

He thinks he might just hate it, cold and comfortable weight in his hands all the same.

After much deliberation, it goes beneath his pillow.

* * *

Some evenings he takes himself in hand. Harsh grip, quick movements. Not for any reason other than releasing the tension that sometimes builds in his body. Sometimes, after nightmares, he can’t bear to. Other evenings it’s a sense of necessity. If he goes to sleep, pressure unreleased, he knows the nightmares he will have. They’re nightmares he’ll avoid at almost any cost and better a moment’s reminder under his own control than his dreams taking dark turns without his input. 

After, he wipes himself off. Curls to the wall. He can’t sleep facing the room any more and in his workshop the old armchair in the corner where once he’d sit with notebooks to sketch and note down designs feels too much a risk to sleep in. There’s a reason he’s moved more to using the cot. Sometimes the stone against his forehead, cold and unmoving, is a reassurance. Other nights it reminds him altogether too much of his cell, of Ripley, of when and after. 

After nightmares it’s a strange comfort and his mind follows the paths of the memory: after. The wall. The lock clicking shut, the scrape of the key. The silence, the nothing. The days of sleep and food and hiding. And then: words. Light. Freedom. Vox Machina at the door, Vex sat at his side, Bad News in his hands. 

After those nightmares he presses his face to the wall and breathes in and out. After a time, he sleeps. 

When he wakes there’s no moment of disorientation. 

* * *

He’s not better but in some ways he is. He knows now how to spend his days, how to find some occupation that his mind and what scattered thoughts he has can keep up with, something that ensures he’ll see someone, somebody, during the course of the day.

Some days he’s stable. Smiling. Some days are good, sunshine and forge-smoke, arrows for Vex and a myriad new metal toys laid along the windowsill of his workshop. 

Other days, he’s lost. More than that, he’s  _ confused. _ He doesn’t know what to do beyond what he already does and even then some days it’s a struggle. The toys help. Something simple to work on with a myriad of different designs. Intended not to help or to harm but simply to bring joy; he can work on them on even the worst of days. The deer he made for Keyleth, the bear for Vex. The fish that never leaves his pocket.

There’s greater stability. Like his sleep, increasingly lasting the night through undisturbed, his days become clearer. Calmer.

He can’t help but feel this won’t last.

“Nothing lasts,” Cass says, in one late night conversation. “Every time you think you’ve found some new calm, something- unsettles it.” She shrugs. “That’s how life is. It’s hard. The most we can do is keep trying.”

She looks oddly a lady as she says it, silver-shadow hair pulled back from her temples, hands braced on the work surface, slippered foot tapping the stone where it pokes out of her robe. Her smile is the slightest bit mocking in the way only a younger sibling’s can be when she pats his hand.

“You’ll get there,” she says. “If only because I’ve proven it can be done.”

She’s got a point. If his youngest sister can be functional after surviving the Briarwoods for five years, he can be functional after five weeks with Ripley.

* * *

He doesn’t withdraw. He’s promised not to do that and he means to hold to that as best he can. Some nights make it hard - some nightmares that leave him trembling well into the morning no matter how hard he presses his forehead to the stone. Other nights are easy - sleeping almost all the night through, nothing but the old nightmares and old fears, Briarwoods and cells and not much more - and he finds the others to be a glad and comforting presence in the morning. 

He doesn’t withdraw but that doesn’t mean he becomes all that much more social. He doesn’t recoil from company, at least. Some days he even goes so far as to seek it out, asking Keyleth for company or joining Vex for walks with Trinket. Other days he sits with Cassandra - while there’s a lull such as this he might as well offer what help he can and Whitestone is his duty as much as hers. More, arguably, as he’s the elder. 

Plenty of days are spent in his workshop. Some evenings, some nights too. The more time he spends, the more toys that litter the windowsill, the more it feels like his. Trace after trace of Ripley wiped away. Some nights spent in the cot in his workshop he wakes but feels no prickling sense on the back of his neck. 

Other nights his hands find the gun beneath his pillow and he remembers all too clearly. 

It’s a comfort, the gun. A safety. A reassurance. A kind of security that comes from knowing he has a means of protection easily to hand. 

It’s also terrible, in every way he can imagine.

* * *

“You can’t escape me,” the Ripley to his left says. “Not as long as you remember me.”

“And if you forget,” says the Ripley on the right, “Then you’ll forever wonder what you’ve lost.”

The dream shimmers. Shifts. A million Ripleys become one. A metal hand presses, cold and cruel, to his cheek.

“We’re the same, you and I,” she says. “We complete each other. Why,” and she’s holding Retort, now, metal finger trailing temptingly over the trigger. “You slept with me long before I did with you.”

Percy bolts upright. No screams. No sick. 

Instead, he shakes and hugs his knees to his chest like a child.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is interested, I have two new oneshot fics up - Forgotten Realms setting. They are [What Worry You Warrant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175525) and [kindness to cruelty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24483418). If you read them, I hope you enjoy them!
> 
> Please leave comments!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which help is sought.

The images echo through his mind. They’re not quite nightmares anymore but they’re not so simply dismissed as merely bad dreams. They’re not memories so often now, nor variants of memories, nor the dreams that pull him in directions he desperately doesn’t want to go.

Instead he’s left with dreams of fears, of strange places and people that unsettle him in ways he doesn’t notice until it’s past, because they resemble the cell or the dungeons of Whitestone; because they’re dead or they were dying last he saw or they’re a reflection of _Ripley_ in some way that he doesn’t notice immediately. Women with hair in her bun or the same lines around the mouth. Women who walk the same way or speak with her energetic precision, who tilt their hands just as she would to gesture or who wear the same skirt she wore when-

Sometimes Vex is in those dreams but it seems his mind is no longer confusing Vex with Ripley. Instead they’re pitted as opposites, as contrasts. Sometimes Vex spells up some kind of a shield. Sometimes she simply speaks, just as she had when they retook Whitestone, ready with responses and challenging Ripley in ways Ripley does not know how to react to. Sometimes Vex is simply there, unseen at his back, a reassuring presence that nonetheless gives him strength enough to face down the echoes of his fears.

Other times, there is no Vex, only Ripley, Ripley and Retort, and words he hates and yet knows are not entirely untrue. 

_Why,_ dream-Ripley had said, holding Retort in her hand with all the pride of a parent. _You slept with me long before I did with you._

It makes him want to retch, that, it makes him want to throw the cold-comforting gun across the room and some evenings he almost does, almost lets it skitter across stone floors if only to see it chipped and damaged and far away from him but for the fact he needs it, it’s cold comfort, it’s cold weight in his hand a steady reminder that he has made himself safe, that Ripley is dead and that, should anyone try such again, he has but to reach beneath his pillow to find a weapon. He shakes. He trembles. His fingers flex around its handle.

And he places it back beneath his pillow.

* * *

“Bad dream?” Vex asks when she sits beside him that morning. He’s down early - far earlier than perhaps he should be, given how late he finally went to bed - but he couldn’t stay in bed after that dream, not with any degree of comfort or ease.

“Yes,” he says because no one else is around. It’s easy to admit to Vex having admitted the ones before. Bad dreams and nightmares, things that have made him avoid them all before and that, he thinks, she must understand given how her face softens and saddens when he admits to them.

Her hand is gentle on his elbow. Warm. “Did you sleep enough, dear?”

“I think so,” he says. He glances over to her. She’s sat awkwardly, one leg either side of the bench so she fully faces him. There’s a mug of coffee in the hand resting on the table but her other hand, soft and gentle, rests on his elbow still.

He finds he doesn’t want it to move away.

“And you?” he asks after a soft, still moment. “How did you sleep?”

* * *

The nightmares are strange. Nightmares always are. When they are not drawing from memories - and, sometimes, even when they are - they shift and flow around him like water, changing from things he thinks he knows to things he does not. Some nights he dreams and he half-knows it to be a dream because things he should fear or should dread or should _hate_ inspire no more response than a curiosity and once, even, a strange eagerness. He _wants_ the terrible things the dreams suggest when they are dreams, soft and liquid around him. He is not entirely himself in these dreams. 

Sometimes he is. Sometimes the dreams bring him old memories or they bring him Ripley or they bring him the Briarwoods and he knows them to be dreams and knows that he hates them. Sometimes they bring him memories and what with all their dreamlike quality, the vagueness to the edges from time and mutable memory, he flows along with them until he wakes gasping. 

The new dreams are something else. He is, as he told Vex, almost used to them now, even the new strange ones that flow around him and don’t make him want to scream until he’s awake and realises what the dreams say of him. 

That hardly means he likes them but he is, perhaps, used enough to them that to shake them off is little worse than it had ever been before.

* * *

He picks up habits that are helpful. In his room and in his workshop, he sleeps facing the wall, his back to the room. Ripley’s cold-comforting gun is usually beneath his pillow and Diplomacy sits by his bedside. When with the group, he stays just within arms reach of Keyleth or of Vex or - on some rare occasions - Trinket. None of them ever reach for him without some kind of warning now and it’s pleasant to be able to be close without being pushed. Some days, after some of the nightmares, he goes to Grog and to the training room and spends several minutes afterwards bandaging bloodied knuckles.

Other days, after other nightmares, he spends a half hour shaking in his bed before he’s able to emerge.

He emerges, though. He made a promise and he makes his way down to join the others for meals, joins them on jobs, joins Cass in managing the city and _god_ he hates that; sitting still and unable to so much as doodle designs drives him utterly up the wall, even if it does help the city.

More often than not, when those days are done, he ends up back at his workshop until all kinds of late hours, doodling designs, working on projects, reclaiming ideas he’d not dared to entertain while under Ripley’s metal thumb. Despite the lack of sleep that follows, it helps.

* * *

“Percy? Can I come in?”

It’s Vex, standing at the door and wrapped up in a blanket, and sheer surprise means it takes Percy a moment to go, “I- yes, of course.” After a moment his brain catches up. “Are you all right? It’s very late.”

Vex shrugs, blanket shifting over one shoulder.

With one hand, Percy starts moving his various projects back from his desk, tidying them away. He doesn’t need to look to do this, thankfully, and his eyes stay on Vex, even if he’s still very confused by her presence. “Do you want company or conversation or...?” He trails off, rather lost.

She shakes her head and takes the stool that Keyleth sometimes perches on when they’re working on a project together. The one Vex increasingly uses when she visits his workshop. The blanket around her shoulders drapes almost to the floor. “Not conversation,” she says. “Just company.”

“Not your brother or Trinket?”

Vex’s eyes, for all they’re clearly tired, are focused when they look at him. “Not for this.”

“Oh.” It makes sense. If he has nightmares, Vex might well have them too. “I’ve hardly been the best company of late,” he points out.

She chuckles a little at that and he’s glad to see seriousness turn to a smile. He’s always liked to see Vex happy. 

“Tell me what you’re working on?” Vex’s voice is soft, slurred with tiredness and a poorly-suppressed yawn but the invitation to ramble is as genuine as ever. Slowly he starts setting the things on his desk back in place.

“Not much,” he says. “Just small things, mostly. Ammunition. Arrows. More of the toys.”

“Arrows?”

“New designs,” he says. “I’ve a few ideas I’ve not yet managed to make work.”

“Tell me?”

He looks at her, tired and shaken from nightmares, bundled up in a blanket and perched on the stool. Her head is tilted curiously but she’s sat awkwardly, too tired to perch properly as is her wont.

“Take the armchair,” he says gently. “I’ll show you the blueprints. Maybe you’ll have insight.”

* * *

They’re three alterations into the second blueprint when Vex yawns, long and jaw-cracking. She already seemed tired when she came in, with the yawn and how she’s curled in the chair, blanket wrapped around her, she seems all the more so.

“It’s late,” he says gently. “You should sleep. You can take the bed in the corner if you’d like, or stay in the chair.”

Her eyes are half-closed with tiredness but they still seem to narrow. “What about you?” she asks.

“I don’t need to sleep just yet,” he says. “And I can always sleep at my desk if you do take the cot.” He shrugs. “It’s far from the most uncomfortable place I’ve slept.”

She watches him, eyes narrowed, for a long moment, doubtful and concerned and analytic for all her tiredness. He doesn’t doubt she’s reading layers into everything and it makes something warm swell in his chest. 

“You first found me in a prison cell,” he reminds her, gently. “I’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure,” she says, still watching, eyes still sleepily searching as though to be certain. Eventually, though, she curls up in her corner of the chair, just her toes peeking out from her blanket. “Thank you, Percy,” she says, face half-smushed into the cushions. 

“Sleep well,” Percy says. 

Before he goes to sleep, not all that long after, he pulls another blanket from a cupboard. With care he tucks it around Vex, close around her shoulders and covering her feet.

She’s already so deeply asleep she barely stirs.

* * *

If things were simpler- 

But things are never simple. Percy knows this well. He can almost feel the way that sleep is taking him as he beds down in the cot, as he pulls blankets close around his shoulders, halfway covering his head, as he presses his forehead to the cold stone wall. He thinks, later, that he should have just stayed awake but he is so very tired and sleep pulls him into its arms as rapidly as he’d fallen into Orthax’s grip.

* * *

There are more dreams than the simply terrible. More than repeats of what happened, the first time Ripley had him and the last, more than extrapolation and the simple terror of being stuck in a cell, siblings screaming just out of reach and himself unable to do anything. More than Ripley working over him, cutting him open and stitching him back together. 

There was also, he remembers now, remembers with skin-crawling fear, how she would simply stand there and _watch._

From her workbench to his. From right at his side. From the door to his little cell, silhouetted by the doorway, hair a dark halo around her face as she watched and she waited.

He doesn’t have to remember what it led to for the terror to hit him, to send him shaking even in the dream, to curling up and turning his face away, forehead pressed to the cold stone wall in the old logic of childhood.

_If you can’t see the monster, the monster can’t see you._

* * *

A hand shakes him awake and for a moment he’s still in the dream. The hand is firm on his shoulder, the face pale, hair dark, eyes intent.

Percy screams, scrambling back so fast he hits the wall and knocks the air out of his lungs. Uneven blocks bite into his back.

“Percy,” the voice is soft and measured and Percy screws his eyes shut. “It’s just me.” The voice is closer but she hasn’t reached to touch him again.

That’s unlike her.

Slowly, he opens his eyes. A little way away Vex is standing, hands extended. 

“Percy,” she says, voice shaking. “It’s only me.”

He almost starts to cry then and there. Relief. Terror. Horror and shock. He reaches out blindly and finds Vex’s hands, not even reaching for his glasses.

“Do you want me to go?” she asks. “You screamed, darling.”

He knows he did. His throat is still raw.

“No,” he says. “Stay. Please.”

He’s shaking. He’s shaking harder than he has since the worst nightmare. Vex’s other hand wraps around his.

“I’m right here,” she says. “And when you’re able, you’re going to tell me what just happened.”

Just as when she saved him, her tone brooks no argument.

* * *

He calms slowly. Quick breaths in and out, eyes screwed shut. She suggests getting a glass of water for him but as soon as she moves, his hands grip hers tighter. 

“Please,” he says. 

“All right, darling. All right.”

He calms slowly but he calms. For a moment his breaths go stuttery, as though he’s about to hiccup but he doesn’t and slowly his grip on her hands loosens, his eyes open. He still looks halfway to terrified but his breathing is slow and even as he finds his glasses and puts them on.

“I’m sorry,” he says and Vex runs her thumb over his hand. 

“Darling,” she says, gentle but certain. “What happened?”

* * *

The words don’t come easily. He can’t simply say, _I thought you were Ripley,_ because that isn’t fair. He can’t say, _You look alike and she used to stand over me the same way when I was sleeping._ He can say, _I woke up and I thought I was still in the dream,_ but he doesn’t know if Vex would understand.

“Do you remember?” he asks, after chewing the words around his mouth long enough they don’t feel strange. “What I said to you, after- remember the first week back. When I gave you an arrow and you- and then I-”

“You ran,” Vex says. “Yes. I remember.”

“What I said,” he says. 

For a long moment Vex is silent. He thinks, maybe, she has forgotten. He can’t blame her. It was months ago now. There’s no reason for it to be branded into her mind as it is in his.

“Sometimes you’d wake,” she says eventually, “And she’d be standing over you, watching.”

Percy nods. “I thought I was still in the dream,” he says.

She watches him quietly. He can almost see her putting it together. Vex is not and has never been a fool and she’s very good at noticing the small things, piecing together what happened from a little. As the pieces click together, tidy as the mechanism of his guns, Vex’s mouth makes a little _“o”_ of understanding. “You mistook me for Ripley,” she says.

His nod is as jerky as a marionette.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” he says when he feels able to properly speak again, the words tripping off his tongue in apologetic haste. “It’s not- you’re not like her, even a little-”

“She was of a height with me,” Vex says. Her voice is thoughtful, mind still clearly mapping it all out. “We both have dark hair. In low light and when half-asleep and startled, it’s easy to mistake even those you know.” Gently, her thumbs run over the backs of his hands but there’s a stiffness to her shoulders, a slight hint of upset, of offence. 

He wishes he knew how to soothe it away but comforting others has never been his strong suit. He doesn’t know how to state the obvious, that Vex and Ripley are such different people, kindness compared to cruelty, warm sunlit woods compared to cold dark cells. They have never been alike, should never be combined and he hates his mind in this moment, hates his nightmares, hates _Ripley_ for all she did and all she’s caused them.

“It doesn’t make it better,” he says. “Of all people, the last person I’d wish to mistake for her is you.”

There’s a frown to Vex’s face, something still in how she holds herself if not quite the same as before, and he tries to find the words to solve this.

“You’re _good,”_ he says. “Not- not in the way that Keyleth is perhaps, but you care and you...” He trails off. His shoulders slump. “There are things you would never do, things you would never condone or permit or encourage or allow, things that _she_ would have taken no issue with, things she _did-”_

“Percy…” Vex’s voice is soft. 

“She killed my family,” Percy says. “The Briarwoods led it but she… she _did_ it. I heard my siblings screaming, I heard them die. Because of her. And I-”

He chokes off. He can’t say more. The words swirl around his head, clear as anything but he can’t make himself say them - the words are there, the words are _there_ and yet they’re just beyond reach, his throat closing as he tries to make his mouth frame them. He can’t make himself say them anymore than he managed to make himself fight her. Instead the memories cascade across the surface of his mind, clear visualisations for the words his tongue refuses to give shape to.

Vex’s hand is warm and firm in his. “Percy,” she says. “I know. It’s all right.”

Percy’s eyes close but his hand grips Vex’s tight. She doesn’t complain. If anything, she grips back harder.

“Percy,” Vex says. “Dear? It’s not your fault. Some things are out of our control. We all shiver when we get cold except Grog and that’s because he’s a goliath. Some things-” she shrugs one shoulder. “It’s like shivering. It’s all right.” 

When he opens his eyes she’s sat beside him still, watching his face with an edge of concern. 

“It’s all right,” she says. “It’s not your fault.”

* * *

Neither of them are ready for rest. Vex is clearly still concerned, the frown still not gone from her face even as his breathing has slowed, even as he’s withdrawn his hands from hers. 

Perhaps, he thinks, _because_ he’s withdrawn his hands from hers. He remembers her apology for touching him, for making him jump.

“Sometimes,” she says. “When I can’t sleep, I go for walks.” He frowns at her and she shrugs. “Trinket gets antsy if I sit around doing nothing, you know. And I walk enough during the day to know where I’m going in the dark.”

“And you have half-elven darkvision,” he feels compelled to add.

“And I have half-elven darkvision,” she agrees. “If you think you’d have a hard time in the woods we can just walk around the castle,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “If you’d rather.”

That’s practically a challenge and all Ripley did has not taken him so far from himself that he’ll simply back down from one of those.

“No,” he says. “The woods are fine.”

* * *

The woods are quiet. It’s a quiet, Percy thinks, that both of them need. For Vex, he knows, it’s familiar and soothing for it, for him, it is simply the peace and quiet he needs right now - has needed since Ripley, if he’s absolutely honest, has needed for years for all he’s been loath to admit it.

Admitting it might once have been a weakness he’d not have dared commit to but the things that have come from not admitting it at all, the way he snaps and breaks and hurts friends he does not ever want to hurt… those are things he can no longer avoid. 

Trinket ambles at their side after being called by Vex’s whistle, veering across the path they walk, following interesting scents here and there. With the tree cover thick above them it obscures what little light the moon gives but, out here, the dark is neither ominous nor fearful, not with the soft breeze and scent of the forest, not with Trinket’s soft grunts and the occasional distant birdcalls. Vex points out potholes, dips in the path, fallen branches, and they make steady progress through the woods in peace.

She doesn’t try to touch him. Like before, she gives him space and, like before, it’s a comfort and an ache at once that she’s willing to tread so carefully. Vex is, of all of them, one of the most comfortable with affection, bestowing it with ease, laughing and flirting with a readiness only Scanlan supersedes. He appreciates the space, appreciates the understanding shown, but with how and why Vex understands things it strikes him that she can be so affectionate herself.

“How do you-” he pauses, wordless. Gestures. “How do you feel comfortable again? I- in general and, with- with- _that.”_

Vex frowns at him, head tilted. “By _that_ what do you mean? Affection? Intimacy?”

Percy nods, if a little jerkily. For all her presence soothes, for all the fresh air and calm, the adrenaline of the nightmare lingers. “You flirt _constantly,”_ he says. “You- you’re-” He tries to get his words in order and settles on a summation. _“How?”_

“Bullshit,” she says. When he frowns she shrugs. “That’s most of it. Act confident enough and everyone just buys it.”

“But-” He gestures. “With this- with _that-_ ”

She shrugs. “It’s not always easy,” she agrees. “And it can take time but-” She pauses. Her fingers tap against her thigh. “My situation was different to yours,” she admits. “I don’t- darling, I can’t say what would help you. Just what helped me.” She watches him a moment, head tilted as though to ask if she should still continue. 

“I’ve had little luck myself,” he says. “I- honestly, any advice you have would be appreciated.”

“If-” she starts. Sighs. “This is going to sound super counter-intuitive but something I find helps with the whole-” She gestures. “Touch thing, is being affectionate.”

His disbelief has to be apparent because she pulls a face. 

“Really,” she says. “It helps when you control it. And… they don’t get to take that from you, the people who hurt you. They _have_ but you don’t have to let them. You can take it back on your own terms. It helps.”

It still sounds alien to him but … it makes a kind of sense. He’s not afraid of kissing her cheek for all he’s terrified of her kissing his. It is one thing to be touched without warning, another thing entirely when he makes the choice to reach out himself. Fighting with Grog involves far more physical contact than he’d usually accept at all.

Counter-intuitive it may be but he thinks he can see the logic.

“Control,” he murmurs. In the quiet of the woods, with the soft wind, the noise doesn’t travel far, muffled as it is by the trees and bushes. “No, that- that makes sense.”

He’s not one for reaching out. He never has been and even less since what happened but she doesn’t startle when his hand takes hers. Instead she glances up at him, her gaze as bright and clear as ever.

“Thank you,” he says.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments and kudos!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well. That happens.

He tries. Affection is not something that comes easily to him, has not come easily to him for years. It is not something he has sought nor encouraged. After this most recent trial he had thought it might be lost to him forever, if even what small affection his closest friends show him makes him respond so.

But he trusts Vex. He trusts his friends. If he cannot relearn how to accept easy contact with them, then whom?

* * *

Affection _does_ come easily with Vex. That is… that is something he does not want to examine too deeply, content to accept it as natural consequence of the time spent with her, of what he now knows of her past and what she has understood of his time with Ripley. There is an understanding there, a trust, and for all the fear Ripley has instilled for some things he does not fear the touch of Vex’s hands on his, now, does not startle at her close presence.

The others are not so easy. Vax is a flitting creature, here and there and everywhere, still distrustful of him. He watches closely when Percy is anywhere near Vex in his sight, afraid that what happened before may happen again. Percy cannot blame him; for all both he and Vex know now to avoid it he knows not what else might cause such a response.

Scanlan is not someone he has ever much been close to, nor Grog, though with the newly instituted sparring sessions contact with Grog is now nearly unavoidable. It’s not affection, really, except that Percy is starting to think roughhousing kind of _is_ a sort of affection for Grog. 

Keyleth though, and Pike. Keyleth who has always been easy with affection, who embraces with exuberance, Pike whose hands have readily reached out to reassure. Those, he thinks, are good people to start with.

Keyleth startles when he sits down beside her, clapping one hand briefly on her shoulder, but she smiles brightly when she sees him, passing him the coffee and making small talk with the same ease as ever. If she thinks the affection odd, she doesn’t say anything.

“Sleep well?” she asks instead.

“Terribly,” he says, still half-slurred with sleep, “But I went for a walk and slept better after.”

She pushes the coffeepot closer and slides him the jug of cream and bowl of sugar without prompting. 

* * *

It is… it is strange to share more contact. Stranger still that it doesn’t instill in him the same shaking fear as before when someone touched him. But he makes his way through breakfast without shaking or startling or being shocked by some memory - even when Keyleth’s hand brushes his unexpectedly, he doesn’t jump as he has for weeks now - and when he goes to join Keyleth when she decides to go and check on the Sun Tree, he catches her elbow when she trips without much of a thought. 

“Percy?” she asks as they leave the room. “Are you all right?” She’s eyeing him, concerned but not yet frowning. “Just- you’re not usually… touchy-feely.”

“No, I’m not,” he agrees. “I’m still not. I’m just-” He trails off. He can’t think of a way to explain it that doesn’t sounds stupid.

“You’re being affectionate,” she points out. “You’re never affectionate unless it’s something big, like when Pike died or when the white dragon flew over.”

That’s true enough. 

_“And,”_ she adds emphatically, “You’ve basically jumped a foot since we got you back if anyone so much as brushes you.” She pauses again, eyeing him once more. “Wait. Is this like the Vex cheek kisses thing?”

At his lack of an answer she gasps, grins. 

“It is, isn’t it? You weren’t ever affectionate before but you didn’t _jump,_ so now we can’t hug you without you startling you’re being affectionate instead.”

“Something like,” he says. “It’s, ah- Vex suggested it. That- that choosing to make contact myself, being in control of it. It would make it less-”

“Scary.”

He eyes her for that but as ever, there’s no judgement in her gaze. “Quite,” he agrees.

They’re a ways down the corridor when she speaks again, almost at the main doors. 

“Does it help?” she asks, glancing over. “What Vex suggested?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he says. In truth, it has been too little time to know. “But I think it will. The reasoning is sound.”

* * *

The reasoning is most definitely sound, he learns. 

It’s a strange day, learning to be affectionate, even if ultimately boils down to very few actions. It’s daunting the first few times but after clapping Keyleth on the shoulder, after the small accidental touches of breakfast and of catching her elbow as they walk, the tension of it lessens. 

He sits beside Keyleth while she communes with the Sun Tree, his back pressed to the tree’s sun-warmed bark, hands braced against tree roots and soil. His fingers just brush hers as they had when they’d first become friends, small accidental touches born of close proximity, ones he’d always apologised for until, after the first month, he finally accepted that she really didn’t mind and truly did consider him a friend.

That, with these people, amongst these new friends, physical contact was not only acceptable but, by some, encouraged.

“So?” he asks when Keyleth’s eyes open, no longer glimmering green, her other hand withdrawing from the tree’s grand trunk. 

“Oh, he’s fine,” Keyleth says, picking herself up and pulling him to his feet. “Says he can’t feel anything weird or seriously wrong, nothing that’s setting off his sense for evil.”

“So we’re probably safe?”

She frowns at him but there’s a smile quirking the edges of her lips. “Let’s not jinx ourselves,” she says. “But yeah, he thinks so. There’s not many traces of what the Briarwoods did left.”

There’s ghosts, he knows, at the graveyard around the Zenith but those are being slowly destroyed or put to rest as Pelor’s clerics work to reconsecrate the temple. There’s scattered vampire spawn hidden in basements but each time they emerge they’re dealt with. Their numbers are dwindling: there hasn’t been an attempted attack in months. The zombie giants and summoned skeletons are gone too, thoroughly destroyed in the rebellion.

Whitestone, he thinks, is on the mend, and if the Sun Tree is anything to judge by, it’s going to flourish.

* * *

“You’re right,” he says that evening. He almost wishes he had some small thing to gift to Vex now - a new explosive arrow, another metal Trinket. Something to let her know how this suggestion has helped. “If it’s under my own control-” His hands flex at his side; he almost wants to reach out. Now, knowing he can, knowing contact doesn’t have to be such a terrifying, terrible thing… it is so much easier to even contemplate. He meets Vex’s gaze. “It really does help. Thank you.”

For a moment there is silence. For a moment, almost encased in amber, she watches him. Her gaze darts to his cheek, her hands flex as though she might reach. 

She doesn’t. They’ve both had practice at this. Even with the help of- of contact under his own control, Percy does not know what response Vex kissing his cheek is likely to get.

But, at least, he knows how he can respond. Gently, he leans over and presses a kiss to hers.

* * *

Vex, he realises, is rarely bestowed affection. Trinket is affectionate to her, of course, and Vax goes without saying, but for all Vex has always doled out affection with ease she rarely seems to encourage it being given. Even when she flirts it’s a quick, fleeting thing, almost ostentatiously casual like one of the castle’s cats long before, walking up when it wanted attention and wandering off when it was done.

He’d not truly noticed before, too caught up in how readily she gave affection, too startled by the kisses she left on his cheeks, but it strikes him now he’s able to _see_ it.

And yet, she lets him kiss her cheeks. Has advised him that touch might help. Reaches out to him not with any of her old flippant affection but out of concern, reaches back those times he has reached for her. 

It is a daunting kind of honour, he thinks, that she trusts him enough to permit him that. With how carefully she avoids the affection she doesn’t want he doesn’t doubt she’d keep her distance if she didn’t care for it. And yet, she’s often nearby. When he reaches out, she reaches back.

He doesn’t entirely know how to feel in the face of it except to acknowledge that, in some way, it most definitely _matters._

* * *

Cass notices the new affection too, eyes him oddly when he fleetingly touches her elbow to move past her in the council room. Afterwards, the day’s meetings done, she pulls him aside. He doesn’t startle at her touch, even abrupt as it is, and she eyes him again when he lifts her hand from his arm, squeezes her fingers and lets go.

“This isn’t like you,” she says, frowning. “Is something the matter? Something else?”

With the white in her hair, the frown, it makes her resemble their mother all the more and she half reaches across the space between them before halting. She, just as well as any of his friends, remembers how he would flinch so little as a few days ago. She knows too, as they don’t, how little their family ever really touched before.

“Percy?” There’s a note of true concern to her voice and he halts his thoughts to reply.

“Nothing bad,” he assures her. “Just- none of the other tactics were working. Time in the workshop. Going for walks. Something new was required.”

“You-” she doesn’t finish the sentence. “Touch?” she says instead. Her frown hasn’t fully eased. Where her arms are crossed her fingers tap on her elbows. When he shrugs, she sighs. “Is it helping?”

“More than I thought,” he admits. “I- it helps. To have some say in it.”

“Yes,” she says, relaxing. “Yes, it does tend to.”

* * *

It becomes more regular. Small moments of contact here and there, offering affection on those occasions he feels able. With Vex and Keyleth and Pike it’s easiest but none of the party escape it. Even unexpected touches become easier to bear, Vax’s hand on his back as the rogue darts past him down a corridor, Keyleth’s shoulder jostling his, Pike’s hand patting his reassuringly. 

It’s exhausting in its way, preparing to reach out and accepting the contact in turn. He sleeps deeply those next few nights, with few dreams, fewer nightmares. The easing of fear alone would be enough help; the tiredness and resultant deep sleep is more than he’d have dared hope for.

“Thank you,” he says to Vex, one morning when he went to bed so early the night before he rose early enough to join her before all the rest descended. “I- it- it’s helped more than I think you know.”

She smiles, reaches a hand halfway across the table towards him, palm up. An invitation. It’s a blessing, he thinks, that he can reach back with nary a moment’s pause, settle his hand atop hers. 

“I’m glad,” she says, her fingers wrapping around his. “I’m glad it helps.”

* * *

It is not a cure all. There are nights he cannot sleep, at the worst there are nights he wakes shaken from nightmares. At the best, there are days even the contact and proximity to others is not enough to pull him from plans and ideas he wants so desperately to work on. That is not, he thinks, a bad thing. Staving off evils and ills does not prevent them from existing entirely and while he would rather be wholly free of nightmares he highly doubts that’s ever to be in the cards for him. 

Besides. He likes to work. He likes the return to productivity, to reclaiming his old ideas and making something new.

And, more often than not, if he’s awake late in his workshop, if he decides he’s bored and to descend and wander, there is company he might do it with.

Vex smiles when he joins her walking and it is ever increasingly easy to smile right back.

* * *

It’s easy, too, to lean his head against Vex’s shoulder when they sit outside. Trinket’s off snuffling around and in the darkness of the grounds it’s oddly soothing. Maybe it’s because it’s so late. Maybe it’s the fresh air. Maybe it’s Vex sat beside him, perched on the fallen tree as easily as she perches on stools and worktops. For a moment she startles and he can’t blame her. Even now he still only seeks contact occasionally - the grip of her hand in his or when he kisses her cheek - and it’s never such as this.

“Tired?” she asks, when his head settles in place, her head leaning back against his.

“A little,” he admits. “And. It’s even easier when I’m tired.” Exhausting as it may be to make contact, tiredness also dulls the reflexes, dulls the terrors. All the memories that would make him scream, quiescent in the back of his mind with exhaustion. Sometimes it’s the other way around and the tiredness means he can’t fight them off but today they’ve been brought up and beaten around his skull by his time in the workshop, soothed by proximity to friends, and so they’ve faded into the back of his mind. He’s glad. He likes this, being able to rest easily with Vex. For all he’s tired, it’s also relaxing.

He really hasn’t had much of that for a while.

Vex’s hand finds his, intertwines their fingers, her thumb running over his knuckles. That’s soothing too and he leans a little more against her shoulder. “Oh, Percy,” she says. She sounds so fond. Fond as she did when she would kiss his cheek and he takes a moment to move his head, press a kiss to hers. With the tiredness and the awkward angle, it ends up being to the corner of her mouth but she doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, her hand squeezes his.

It’s impulsive. Impulsive and possibly very foolish but he’s tired and he’s comfortable and Vex is a comfortable, comforting, _safe_ presence beside him so he turns his head again and kisses her on the mouth.

He pulls back after only a moment, presses his face to her shoulder, his eyes tight shut. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I shouldn’t-”

Vex’s thumb draws a line over his fingers. Her other hand, gently, touches his chin, lifts his face. For a moment the memories in the back of his head rise, Ripley’s hand on his face as she went to kiss him, but Vex is slower and gentler, the calluses on her fingers different, familiar, and though she’s angling his head to kiss him she doesn’t stop him when he moves to kiss her first.

Her hand slides gently along his jaw, her thumb over his cheek. Her lips open and when he probes in gently with tongue she’s there to meet him. Some part of him wishes he had more practice. Another part of his mind brings up the shadow of Ripley and he stays glad that he hasn’t. 

When they pull back they’re both breathing a little faster. Vex’s hand is still on his cheek, the other’s fingers still entwined with his.

This time, he says, “Thank you.”

* * *

They walk back inside hand in hand. Smiling the both of them. It’s warm and it’s reassuring and Percy’s very glad that Vex’s hand is gripping his as firmly as he’s holding hers. Neither of them wants to let go. Trinket ambles along beside them, unwilling to go back into the pendant after wandering in the fresh air and sometimes he noses up against their shoulders as a solid and affectionate presence. 

There’s an odd sense to it all. Percy’s almost certain he’s going to have a nightmare tonight: there’s a strange sense to everything for all it’s been _good_ in every conceivable way, a prickling at the back of his neck, the once-quiescent memories shifting and moving in the back of his mind.

And yet, he doesn’t care. He’s dealt with nightmares before. He’s dealt with _these_ nightmares before. And it’s worth it, he thinks, to spend time with Vex like this. More than worth it. She’s been one of the most consistent and reassuring presences since it all and he’ll take nightmares in sleep for her presence when he’s awake. It’s an easy trade to make.

“Vex?” he says quietly as they walk back. “I don’t think- I’ve never said- thank you. For being here. Your presence has been- still is, even, a- it helps. More than you know. And after how I avoided you, you’d be well within your rights to give me up as a lost cause.”

Her smile to him is fond. “You’re not a lost cause, darling.”

A chuckle escapes him. “Thank you for thinking so,” he says. “That’s- thank you. But- you could have given up on me back when we faced the Briarwoods and the demon, or- but you never did. And now I’ve avoided you and I’ve screamed at you-”

“After nightmares,” she points out. “That’s not exactly fair.”

“I- that’s- maybe,” Percy says. “But- thank you. You haven’t had to be there. You could have- but you have been all the same. It- that means a great deal.”

Vex’s hand in his is firmly gentle, her thumb drawing soft patterns over the back of his hand. Her fingers shift just a little against his, not to extricate themselves but just to be a little more comfortable in their grip, and he feels archer’s calluses against his forge blisters. 

“Love you, darling,” Vex says. Her smile over to him is as fond as her voice and he can’t help the smile that spreads across his face in response. Gently, softly, he squeezes her hand.

“Love you too, dear.”

* * *

He doesn’t sleep well that night. He doesn’t sleep well for the next several nights either but that’s for rather different reasons. The next day Vex says nothing, no indication one way or the other and there could be a multitude of reasons for that, few of which he cares to think on. He’d almost be glad, on some level, that his late-night _faux pas_ was being so simply ignored, if only because he doesn’t know what to do with it, where to take it.

But he doesn’t like this, the now unspoken thing between him and Vex, and he thinks she doesn’t entirely like it either.

The problem is, neither of them dares to broach it.

* * *

“Percy?” Vex asks. She’s perched on her usual stool, though far more unstably than usual with her feet tucked up beneath her. She’s been a quiet presence today but it hasn’t been bad for it. He’s used enough to her presence that usually he remembers it when he works and he doesn’t need reminders of her presence any more to keep him from startling. As his mind has finally learned, she’s not Ripley. She’s not someone to be afraid of.

Though - maybe - he’s afraid of whatever she’s going to ask.

“Yes?”

“Are you all right? You’ve been very quiet the past few days.”

His shoulders relax. His grip around his tools readjusts. He almost laughs, just a little. “I’m quite alright,” he says. “Are you? You’ve been quiet as well.”

Usually she’d be asking about what he was making or telling him about what else had been going on. The past few days she’s just been sitting there, watching, and he thinks it’d be uncomfortable but for the fact it’s Vex. Still, she’s perched on the stool, tapping her fingers against the wood of the seat, in silence.

“Vex?”

She blinks, startles, readjusts. “I’m fine, dear,” she says. “Just thinking.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things cannot stay the same forever.

Things don't return to normal. It’s not bad, but it's not the same as before. Instead it’s a strange tense silence that isn’t unhappy but doesn’t serve to resolve anything. He doesn’t dare to discuss it, not if Vex won’t. If she wishes to avoid it, to not think about it, to let it be a late night _faux pas_ that isn’t going to ever repeat then- then he supposes the best course of action is to follow her lead.

That might be easier, he suspects, if she didn’t seem at times to want to speak about _something._ He doesn’t know what it could be but the kiss.

Perhaps, he thinks, she wishes to speak and forbid it and refrains because she’s avoiding it just as he is. Perhaps, he half hopes, she wants to ask, to interrogate, to find out why. He thinks he’d give answers to her then all too easily, if only she asked. Perhaps she is concerned, perhaps uncertain, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, and he doesn’t like this, the worry beating it’s way around his skull, disrupting his work and his focus.

He can’t make the toys; he had made one for her. He can’t make arrows; those have always been for her. He cannot even work on the gun, because _that_ beast is Ripley’s still, for all it’s a product of both of their creations, and though he wants desperately to find some way to make it only his he cannot yet identify what would do that sufficiently to take away his fear.

Instead, he works on small automata, things he worked on when under Ripley’s thumb but has shown to Vex and to Keyleth and to Vax. Things which are only his own.

It doesn’t much help.

He knows why he kissed Vex. It is not any one of the many excuses he could use, he knows that. It is not that it was a cheek kiss that missed - for the first perhaps, that would be the truth, but he made the choice, impulsive as it was, to kiss her again, and he knew what he sought then.

He knows why he sought it, too. He has cared about Vex for a very, _very_ long time.

He knows not entirely why _now_ that old wish should resurface. Or… he supposes he does, in truth. It may be a hopeless wish now, when he is still learning not to fear touch, when unexpected contact can still make him startle even if it no longer makes him shake or sends memories through his skull, but it is a wish he has had for a long time. It’s half of why he gave her the arrows, too. He wanted her well-equipped to face whatever they might encounter, knows her more than capable of making strategic moves on the fly, has always loved the joy in her expression when she receives a gift given freely…

Perhaps he is a weak man but while he has never dared to believe the affection would repeat, that it would ever be his due for the gifts he gave, he has never _not_ been glad for what she has gifted him in turn. He has been glad of any affection she might give as long as he had not the certainty to say a word.

But now… now she cannot kiss his cheek, not without the memories coming back, not without him lashing out in residual fear, now, instead, he kisses hers. Is it so strange, he thinks, that with that affection she permits him to give, with their frequent proximity, that old hopes thought utterly lost might be rekindled?

He is not such a man as to deny the love he feels for Vex. For her brilliance, for her kindness, for the understanding she has shown. Her confidence, her capability, the casual readiness with which she faces so many things. There is little which phases her, few things which shake her and her constancy is as much a reassurance as her moments of flippancy, her flirtation and her jokes. She is someone with whom he has never felt anything less than _safe._

He wishes, now, he knew how to bridge the gap that seems to rest between them.

* * *

“Are you all right?”

He’s not prepared for the question, not from Keyleth, not at breakfast, not before he’s had his coffee. He touches her elbow as he moves past her to the sideboard with the pot, doesn’t startle when her shoulder gently bumps his as she follows him. 

“Seriously,” she says. “You’re all frowny again. And you and Vex aren’t talking; did whatever that happened last time happen again or something?”

The nightmare is startlingly clear; only the boiling coffee split by his shaking hands snaps him out of it.

“No,” he says, setting the mug down, Keyleth passing him a tea towel. “No, thankfully not.”

“Then what-” He glances at her as he wraps his hand with the tea towel and she falls silent. He supposes he must look more severe than usual in his frown.

“I’d rather not discuss it,” he says. “But I promise you, you really don’t need to worry.” Gingerly, he releases the tea towel from his burned hand; the fabric flops onto the sideboard revealing reddened skin. “Well, except perhaps about this.”

* * *

Keyleth heals his hand. It’s a simple enough matter; most of them with serious magic keep a healing spell or two prepared and boil-burned skin is a far easier thing to heal than some of the wounds they’ve gained together. Percy wishes it were as simple a matter to heal other things - his nightmares, whatever fears he knows Vex must have, whatever rift it is that now stands between him and her.

It might be an easy one to bridge if only they would speak of it but he doesn’t dare cross any further lines than he has already.

“You discussed things before,” Keyleth says, the magic fading from her fingertips. “Didn’t you? Not with me. But- Vex. Cass. Kima. Right?”

He chuckles. “Mostly,” he says, “Kima told me to try to punch her. But yes.”

“Will you talk to them about this?”

There’s concern to her face, as clear as it was on Cass’ when he started being affectionate, as on Vex’s when she first grasped his fears. Genuine and caring; the reason that, from the first, Keyleth has been his dearest friend.

“No,” he says. To raise this with Vex would be rude. He _won’t_ talk about this with his sister. He suspects if he took it to Kima she would laugh. “I’d rather not.”

“Percy-”

“There are things,” he says gently, “That you don’t want to talk about not because they’re terrifying or horrible or otherwise daunting in some way but simply because you’d simply rather keep them to yourself.” He watches Keyleth, watches as she huffs, sighs, rolls her eyes, her shoulders relaxing. “I promise it is not nearly as severe as what happened before. And I don’t think it needs talking about.”

“It helped before,” she points out, halfway churlish, halfway sibling-esque teasing. He glares, she grins, the matter is dropped for breakfast.

Still, Percy thinks, she’s not wrong. And there is one other of the group who is routinely and reliably sensible. The only matter is if he can bring himself to speak of it - if it even _needs_ to be spoken _of._

* * *

He’s had little cause to go to the temple Pike’s made. Gods and he - not well acquainted at the best of times, excepting childhood services to Pelor, the routine rituals of life in Whitestone. Still. Pike has faith and Pike’s faith has brought them back from terrible brinks - brought her back to _life._ For all his lack of it he cannot find it in himself to object to all the good that Pike and Pike’s faith has done them.

Pike is not there when he arrives, having paced down through early morning mist to get there. Usually he’d never be up half so early, but after spending the day before debating, the night sleeping so poorly, he decided on skipping breakfast, instead downing his coffee and heading over as soon as it was light.

It’s peaceful in the temple. He likes that.

There’s the soft scent of incense - sandalwood, he thinks, and vanilla - and the honeyed smell of good beeswax candles. The whole room is illuminated; Percy would wonder at the cost of so many candles but that he knows most temples have blessed ones that burn so much slower than most. It’s a beautiful space, this old building that Pike has repaired and reconstructed and dedicated to her god. For all Whitestone has for years been the domain of Pelor and Erathis he doesn’t think the city would reject Sarenrae, not after all the good Pike has done here in her goddess’ name.

It is soothing, sitting there in the early morning as the sun starts to spill through the windows. He never went with Pike to services in Westruun or Emon, never sat in the chapel at Greyskull. He’d never felt the need. Sitting in the small, new-made shrine in Whitestone, he starts to see why others might.

He may never be one for faith, he thinks, never have much faith in gods or higher powers - or lower ones, for that matter - but he does not think he is ignorant of how or why some people might find comfort in it.

* * *

He is half dozed to sleep when Pike arrives, the soft sound of the acolytes moving through the temple, the candles and the incense, the gently warming sunlight all soothing him in a way his own bed and familiar covers could not the night before. He startles when a hand touches his elbow, when a familiar voice calls his name, and steadies when he sees Pike, white-blonde hair and comforting smile, beside him. 

“Hey sleepyhead,” she says. “Wasn’t expecting you here.”

“Wasn’t entirely certain if I was going to come down here,” he admits. “But I wanted to talk to someone.”

The smile slides off Pike’s face. It’s not replaced by a frown but there’s a definite note of concern, some quietly considering look to her eyes that says that she, like Keyleth, is not unaware that something is the matter. He’d sigh if he hadn’t already decided that, of all people, Pike was by far the best option to even try to talk to this about.

“Alright,” she says, moving to sit on the bench beside him. “What’s the matter?”

* * *

It’s- it would be easier if there wasn’t so much to carefully speak around. He cannot say what it is Ripley did, not easily, not at all. Each time he has tried, even with Vex, his throat has closed, his mouth been unable to find the words, his mind able to go up to the very brink but unable to take the final step beyond it. He does not think he should say, either, what has passed between himself and Vex. If he will not raise it with her while she says nothing he can hardly do so with another. It wouldn’t be right.

But he can speak of hesitancy. Of uncertainty. Of fears he does not know how to battle. He can make his mouth frame out those words and give voice to them and they spill out of him with surprising ease once he starts to speak. He suspects all his time spent speaking to Vex has made this easier. He’s not certain if that’s a good thing. 

Pike listens. She is, Percy knows, at times a very good listener and when it comes to tending their little group there are few better.

“Well,” she says when he’s done. “It sounds like you’re doing mostly okay on your own.” He frowns and she gestures. “You know they’re problems. You’ve tried to find solutions - like the cheek thing with Vex. I can’t- I can’t help fix it all, I mean, I’m pretty awesome but there’s some things I can’t just _fix._ There’s some things you have to work through on your own and that can be a good thing.”

His frown deepens. Pike gestures a little frantically.

“I’m not saying what happened was a good thing. God no. But, like. Now you’re away from that, you can tackle it on your own, how you want to. Like I did after I died. And that can-” She shrugs, small gnomish shoulders shifting under the blue and cream tunic she wears. “You know. It can be a good thing. It can help you realise how strong you are. How resilient.”

There’s a point there, though he feels it’s too simplistic a one. Survival alone is no certain mark of strength. But, nonetheless... she is not wrong. For all the trouble he is having, the struggles he is facing, nightmares and fear of touch, memories that spark up when he most wants them to settle down, he is learning to overcome them all, to find ways to survive and work around the problems they cause. 

“Pike?” he asks. “What do you do when you think you need to talk about something with someone but you’re quite certain that the other person doesn’t want to talk about it at all?”

“You mean like with you?”

He’d raise his eyebrows for that but she’s not wrong. He’s been dancing around everything that happened _since_ it happened; even Vex only knows because she’s approached it sideways, come at it from other angles and filled in the gaps with reason and her own experiences. 

“Something like,” he says. 

“We-ell,” Pike says. “Does it _have_ to be talked about? Or do you only _think_ it does cos you’ve built it up in your head to be even more of a big deal than it is?”

He’d resent the implication that he’s making a mountain out of a molehill if it weren’t Pike. She says it like a teacher leading a student towards the obvious answer, her voice laced with sympathy in a way that says she’s done the exact same thing herself. It’s easier to hear it said in understanding than in accusation.

“I rather suspect I’ve built it up to be more of an ordeal than it actually is,” he says. “It is- it is something that, for me, is not a small matter. I- perhaps, I am giving it more weight than I ought but I don’t think remaining silent is really an option either.”

“Why be silent?” Pike looks genuinely puzzled and shrugs. “Why not talk about something else?” 

It’s a blunt idea, a simple one, and it cuts through all his worries and concerns like a knife. 

“What, like-”

“Like something unrelated. You don’t _have_ to talk about this thing, you can just. Talk about other things. You can make it clear that you want to talk about all kinds of things.” Pike watches him, eyes pale and bright in the morning sun, the candlelight. “You know. Make it clear that you can talk about things if you want to and that you want to talk about things with them.”

This is, Percy realises, almost the exact tactic that Vex had used to learn what troubled him.

“Oh,” he says. He stands. 

“Percy?”

“Thank you,” he says, heartfelt. He reaches out, takes Pike’s hands in his and quickly, momentarily, squeezes. “I’m going to see about putting your advice to practice.”

* * *

He doesn’t get a chance to until late that evening. On his return to the castle he’s waylaid by Cassandra, dragged into three meetings after which he extricates himself to unwind in his workshop. He scarcely sees anyone until Keyleth drops by to remind him dinner had been an hour earlier and after he eats the food she’s brought he’s let be for another several hours still.

In truth, he’d probably have been let be the whole night through but that he hears the unmistakable sound of Vex pacing past, her steps almost silent, accompanied by Trinket’s much heavier footfalls. 

Hesitantly, not entirely sure this isn’t a terrible mistake, he opens the door.

* * *

“Vex?”

She doesn’t expect to hear Percy’s voice as she’s heading down but there it is all the same. When she glances over Percy’s standing in the doorway of his workshop, sleeves rolled up to his elbow and soot on his face, looking at her.

“Going for a walk,” she says, too startled to really say much else, gesturing down the hall where Trinket is ambling on ahead. 

For a while there’s silence, neither of them saying anything, and Vex bites back a further explanation; she’s never had to explain herself to Percy before, never felt the need. She doesn’t see why she has to start now for something as commonplace as going for a walk.

Honestly, there are other things she probably needs to discuss and explain first but she hasn’t the first bloody idea _how._

“I thought so,” Percy says after a moment. “I- would you mind if I accompanied you?”

She shrugs, gestures again to invite him into the hall, and he grins warmly, familiarly, reaching for his coat before stepping out to join her. 

It would be easier, she thinks, if she knew what to do. In any other situation, with any other person, perhaps she might. She’s never been ashamed of seeking company, try as Syldor might have done, and it’s not as though she’s _uninterested_ when it comes to Percy. Far from it. Rather, she thinks she might just be _too_ interested and, in her interest and observation, become keenly aware of the likely cause of Percy’s jumpiness, his increased wariness. Of what Ripley must have done.

Knowing what Ripley must have done, for all her interest, for all what happened with Percy that night, she doesn’t know if it’s wise to push. For all she might want to she has a better idea than most what Ripley did to him. A better idea than most what terrors that can inspire, better ideas than most what can cause those terrors to return. She doesn’t want to risk hurting him, not after what he’s already been through. 

(Sometimes Vex wishes she could have used _Doctor Anna Ripley, professional bitch,_ for target practice until she resembled nothing so much as her mother’s pincushion. That she could have let Trinket maul her until she was even less of a smear than the duergar Kima wrecked. It is but a small consolation that Percy, most deserving of the right, got to shoot her brains out - Ripley deserved so much bloody worse.)

Percy beside her is quiet. It’s not quite the same quiet as before, all nervous, anxious tension that she wanted to soothe but had no idea how to. It’s something calmer and more familiar but not without its tension nonetheless. 

“I, ah-” His voice is hesitant, stuttery, and when she glances to him he’s staring pointedly at the floor. “I’m working on a new arrow design for you.”

That’s… not what she was expecting. She’s not entirely sure what she was expecting - perhaps for him to try to apologise or to explain, perhaps one of his moments of strange, soft effusiveness. Though, she supposes, it is effusiveness of a kind. Even with her hesitance to respond he’s being the same as ever; letting her into his space, joining her on walks, making her arrows. It makes her feel terribly fond.

“Oh?”

“I was flipping through old notebooks. Back in the Underdark I had an idea for an acid arrow.”

She remembers this vaguely and grins - the planning, the party bickering, the promise he would make her more arrows if they survived. He’s never been unwilling to give her things. Beside her, Percy gestures.

“It’s not too troublesome; mostly I’m adjusting the shatter-vial design for the holy arrow I made you to something a little sturdier. Most of the acid we have available here is ah- a little magical and it eats through glass over time. Copper can contain it but that doesn’t really tend to shatter.”

“No,” she agrees. “Metal doesn’t tend to.”

There’s a pause and when she glances over he looks startled, pleased.

“Yes,” he says. “However, it seems like silver can contain it somewhat as well - no idea if for as long, but I’ve not seen any degradation yet. So instead I plan to use an old experiment I did when I was younger to lightly coat the inside of the vial with silver.”

He sounds, she thinks, tentative but also a little hopeful. He’s definitely pleased with the idea and he’s got the same confidence he has when he’s quite certain he’s solved a problem, so she has little doubt he’ll finish the arrow. The other emotions she’s not half as certain how to parse.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she says. “Metal plating on glass. ”

Percy shrugs. “It’s not plating exactly,” he says, “More like a very fine layer - like gilding or foil. I could show you if you like, after our walk.”

They’re almost at the doors outside, Trinket already beyond them, the doors open to let the breeze in. It’s refreshing and with the torchlight from the hallway she can see dew glinting on the grass outside where Trinket waits. Percy’s paused beside her as she slows her pace, pausing to take in the fresh air and enjoy the company. The invitation he offers is hardly nothing.

“I’d like that,” she says, smiling. 

* * *

The walk is peaceful. Percy’s quiet words, the admission of a new arrow, seems to readily prompt further conversation. She doesn’t think she’s seen Percy this talkative in … ever, perhaps, and he stalls sometimes, uncertain what to say next. Sometimes he glances to her as though uncertain she wants him to talk at all.

But… it’s nice, honestly. It feels _normal,_ the fond sharing of specific interests and recent events and it reminds her that, even if she has no idea how to speak to Percy about one thing, he’s remarkably easy to talk to about others.

Honestly, she really wishes the ease would carry over in this.

* * *

They don’t talk about it that night. They don’t talk about it the next few nights, either, even after he makes a silvered vial for the arrow and another one just for Vex. Percy tries to assure himself that that’s all right.

They don’t have to talk about it immediately. They don’t have to talk about it at all, if Vex doesn’t want to. But for all more regular conversation seems, slowly, to be clearing the air, it’s not the same.

He wishes he knew how to broach this, but he doesn’t dare to push.

* * *

It helps enough, though. The silences are not quite so tense. Vex sits in his workshop as he works again, watching quietly and very occasionally asking questions. It’s comforting and familiar, soothing. Even if the silences stretch longer now, it simply lets him sink into a lull, the quiet focus of what work he has in front of him.

It’s only after a fitful evening of nightmares he remembers why that’s not necessarily a good thing.

But… it’s as Vex said. Ripley has taken these things from him. He doesn’t want to _let_ her keep taking these things from him. He doesn’t shake or startle when people touch him. He has found workarounds.

Ripley is dead. She doesn’t get to continue to have an impact on him. He refuses.

He pushes his covers back, puts his glasses on. Gets ready for the day.

He has no idea what might help with this. How to ease away the fear of someone wandering up beside him, standing in his space, being more familiar than he’s ever been used to, ever encouraged. Ripley is dead, thank god, and even were she not he’s not about to let her that close to him by choice.

There is, his brain reminds him, only one person he’s yet mistaken for Ripley. And, one way or another, he wants to confront this.

Vex has _suggested_ he confront these things, under his own control.

He’s not entirely sure this idea isn’t a terrible mistake.

* * *

“Vex, dear?” Across the room she startles on her seat, clearly lost in thought. “Would you join me? I’d appreciate your help for something.”

She hops off her seat without question, despite all the things hovering unsaid between them, and crosses over to him. It feels odd, a little, having someone right at his side at his workbench but… this is Vex. He has chosen this. He squares his shoulders and continues to work.

“What do you need, darling?”

“Just-” He glances over to her and gestures vaguely. “Stay here?”

She frowns a little but doesn’t question it. “Tell me what you’re making?” she asks instead.

He shakes his head. “Nothing much. I just- ah. It’s- she would- it was very unsettling, coming back to myself when I’d been working to find her standing there. Or- being startled, sometimes, by her.”

He doesn’t look at Vex but he can feel her tense as she puts it together. From the corner of his eye he sees her dark head tilt towards his shoulder, close enough loose strands of her hair catch on his sleeve. For a moment it sends a frisson of fear down his spine, sends memories flaring up, but- this is Vex. He has chosen this. Slowly, he forces himself to relax.

The tension starts to ebb but does not go entirely. The little clockworks he’s putting together - tiny cog-and-spring automata, small counting mechanisms, a little basic spring-trap too small to be of use to catch anything but insects - are all similar to what he’d hidden the pieces of Warning in when he was under Ripley’s thumb and the familiarity of their making is both soothing and upsetting at once.

“She did this then?” Vex asks, breaking the silence. Percy jolts but doesn’t jump. 

“Y-yes.” He draws a breath. “Yes. She made it clear that she expected that I’d want to work, one way or another. That she knew that I was bored. She gave me access to her workshop. And then, when I worked-”

“She watched.”

He nods but doesn’t look at her. Instead he focusses on the spring mechanism he’s attempting to wrest into position, tiny spring into tiny place, and does his best not to linger on Vex’s proximity. She’s silent beside him. He thinks she grasps, now, the kind of help he seeks in asking her to join him like this, standing at his side, and she gives it readily, standing close enough to him that he can feel her body heat even with the warmth of his forge.

There’s something soothing to it and something terrifying, something as tension-inducing as the memories it summons up. And yet: the memories are not so terrible as when he tries to beat them around his head with forgework, the tactic he’s tried and tested every time before and that has failed him since- 

Since. Instead they swirl, consistent and concentrated, intense when he dares to dip into them but otherwise as quiet and constant a presence as leaves in the woods. Something he knows, something that might distract from something worse hiding in the wings, but something familiar enough to soothe even so. 

He’s hit a state of almost relaxed peace, working on the next little mechanism in lulling silence, when she speaks. He jumps and glances to his side but it’s only Vex, her hair in her braid, her feathers by her ear, her eyes bright and watchful but never prying. There’s a soft curl to her mouth, a downturn that betrays her concern, but none of it colours her voice when she speaks again. 

“Percy? What else would she do?”

He lets a long breath out his nose, trying to relax as he does so, head tilting forward so as to focus on the task and not Vex’s expression. He knows what she means despite her general wording; Vex has never sought to pry into the specifics of what happened. She has guessed and guessed well but she has not yet pried and she has not tried to speak of them more than what bare minimum he has offered. 

“That,” he says, tilting his head to indicate her. “It was- she had a habit, while I was working, you know how absorbed I can get. She would- she would wait for me to be so absorbed that I wouldn’t notice her standing so close and when I _did-”_

He trails off, mouth dry.

“She was in your space,” Vex says softly. “You’ve never much liked that.” She pauses and glances over to him. “Percy dear, are you sure-”

He does look at her for that, the note of her voice gone decidedly worried.

“Yes,” he says. “I- I would not ask you to trust me, Vex, but at the least- at the very least, please trust that I’m sure of this.”

For a long moment there is silence, her eyes bright and dark and watching his with an intensity that Ripley could never match. For all her sharp perceptiveness, there is a kindness to Vex’s gaze and it soothes his fear as nothing else yet has.

“All right,” she says, after a long moment. “All right.” Gently her fingers squeeze his. “What else?”

“She-”

His throat feels tight, closed off, uncomfortable. The words settle in his mind but he can’t speak them easily, cannot plot out the order of them far enough to reach their conclusion.

“What you’re doing,” he says finally. “But closer. Sometimes- remember how I reacted when you touched my hand?”

Vex nods. There is something to the set of her jaw, to the brightness in her eyes, that betrays a deep-rooted anger. With the memories whirling through the back of his mind he finds himself wondering if it’s at him, at Ripley, or at the whole situation. Knowing Vex, he thinks it the lattermost; in all this she’s never yet been angry with him, only worried. 

He nods. “She would. Do that, at times. Reach out unexpectedly. Or-”

Put her head on his arm, rest her chin on his shoulder, her hair tickling his ear, her arm pressed to his, her fingers pressed to his palm, her lips to his cheek and a quietly murmured, _well done._ A myriad things he must not dwell on.

“You know me,” he says, finally. “If you think it will unsettle me, or- if you think it will unsettle me then likely she did it.”

Vex’s voice is soft. “You flinched when I kissed your cheek.”

That is, perhaps, an understatement. “Yes,” Percy says. He makes himself meet Vex’s eyes. “I- yes.” He does not have to say, _I miss them._ He knows Vex misses them too.

“All right,” Vex says. Again, her fingers squeeze his, then she lets him have his hand back. “Go on,” she says and he can hear the smile in her voice. “Make me something lovely.”

* * *

Slowly, they settle back into silence. Vex stands just barely within his space - not quite as close as Ripley ever did - but from the fuzzy edges of his sight, her height, her dark hair, her clear curiosity about what he’s making summons up memories regardless. He knows he is safe. That Vex would never hurt him. That he has chosen this. It does not make the quiet terror at the back of his mind any the less.

He’s not entirely sure how long he works in silence like that - the quiet and the terror makes time fuzz together at the edges - but he feels when her hand slips into his, when he’s let it hang a little too long at his side. The touch is warm and familiar, soothing, but he can't help the shiver-twitch he gives. When her hand moves to withdraw he holds on gently, glances over, shakes his head. “I-” he says. “Please? I don’t want to be forever afraid of these things.”

Vex’s gaze is quietly concerned but she nods, squeezes his hand and lets him return to work. It’s only a few moments later he has to reclaim his hand but her arm stays near his, hand just within reach, head tilted almost imperceptibly towards his.

It sends a thrill of fear through him, a burst of tension and somehow a burst of comfort too. Vex, Percy knows, has no wish to hurt him.

He lets out his breath and returns his attention to his work.

He’s not sure how long the lull lasts this time but it’s easier with the safety of Vex’s presence at his side, easy to sink into work and to remind himself that, for all his _memories_ of Ripley standing by his side, watching him work, here and now the presence beside him is Vex, whom he trusts. Her head tilts towards his shoulder as he sketches out an alteration to an arrow design, her hand finds his free one as he works and it’s… it’s _fine,_ fine in a way Percy didn’t think close company would ever easily be again. When her head shifts, pressing less against his arm and closer to his neck, he lets out a long breath and leans his head to hers, rubs his thumb over the curve of her hand where it rests in his.

He’s still not ready when she kisses his cheek.

It pulls him from the lull entirely, makes him pull back and almost recoil, startled and scared but when he turns to look it’s only Vex, Vex whom he knows, Vex whom he trusts and the fear in his head almost about to turn into true terror instead makes an unexpected left turn into something else.

He reaches his hand to her cheek, leans back into her space, and presses his lips to hers.

The fear’s still there, a lingering thrum beneath his breastbone, heart aching to race but it’s not _solely_ fear, now, not fear at all when Vex lets out a small noise of surprise and reaches for him, not anything even _close_ when she kisses back.

Percy did not think they would ever have this again after how long they’ve carefully spent not talking about it.

When eventually they pause and he rests his forehead against hers they’re both breathing hard, both with one hand cupping the other’s cheek. The fear-thrum still rests, tense as a carriage-spring, beneath his breastbone and he wants to sigh, to laugh, to cry, to stay here in this moment and _breathe._

“We probably should have talked about that sooner,” Vex says dryly and he _does_ laugh then, pulling back and laughing whole-heartedly, the string of tension utterly snapped and he laughs and he laughs and when he is done wiping tears from his eyes, his free hand finds hers.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Yes, we probably should have. But I don’t think either of us were in a place to.”

“No,” she agrees wryly. For a moment they pause, quiet and smiling, connected only where their hands touch. “How- how are you feeling, Percy? Given everything.” There’s a tense pause before she says, tentatively, “Did it help? Not the kissing. Me emulating her.”

He thinks. Turns over in his head the twists and turns of the last few minutes. “Y-es,” he says eventually, word drawn out. “I was not- I certainly was not expecting it to go like that. And I certainly didn’t ask you expecting you to remember- to put together- and then to _use_ that.” He pauses. Smiles, still half giddy. Squeezes her hand. “I had- I wanted to get past that fear. The-” He gestures to his cheek. “I- that she made that something so terrible, something that has always been _yours,_ that only you did- and that it upset you, too...” 

He does not have enough words for this, but Vex watches him, a soft fond smile on her face, the warmth of her hand pressed familiarly to his.

He says, quietly, “I hadn’t expected it to go like that. But- I am glad that it did. I am… I am very glad that it did.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The process used to coat glass with silver by way of precipitate uses what we call [Tollens' reagent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollens%27_reagent). We were taught about it at my secondary school many years ago and though I couldn't initially remember the name of it for the life of me, it struck me as a thing Percy would probably remember and be a nerd about.
> 
> Also Percy has some crossed wires when it comes to flight/fight/fuck and no one can tell me otherwise. He's too much an adrenaline junkie at times, for all he'd deny it if asked to his face.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and look forward to the end - next week is will be the last chapter and a short one at that - more an epilogue, if anything - and the week after that, a new fic! Please leave comments!


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A peaceful, promising end.

For a while they sit in silence. There is something comforting to it, the easy presence and easy contact. The fact that, now, they’ve aired what had lain between them, albeit in an unexpected manner.

“Is there anything left we need to talk about?” Percy asks. “I- I suppose it’s rather obvious, now, my regard for you.”

He says it almost abashedly, as though, even now, he’s not entirely sure it’s welcome. Were it not for the fact of his fear she almost wants to try to kiss that doubt from him. Instead, she squeezes his hand where it stays in hers and smiles.

“Just a little,” she says. “And likewise I’d hope.”

He pauses looking almost puzzled and she almost doesn’t know _how;_ she’s kissed back both times he’s kissed her. She doesn’t do that if she doesn’t _want_ to.

“Love you, darling,” she says - gently, lightly, but very much intentionally and squeezes his hand again. For a moment he seems to stutter, his hand flexing in hers before he wraps her hand in both of his, lifting it to press a kiss to her knuckles. 

“Love you too,” he says, soft and heartfelt and almost silent against her skin. “Very much so.”

* * *

Perhaps the strangest thing is: the admission doesn’t seem to change much. They’re already affectionate with each other, already spend plenty of time together. Vex knows well enough Percy’s fears that she’s not going to just invite herself into his room; Percy’s polite enough not to presume he can enter hers without permission. Not much changes.

They’re more readily affectionate, but Percy’s sat elbow to elbow with her as often as he has Keyleth of late, seeking familiar, comforting company.

She supposes what might yet change is something they’ll have to discuss at some point too, but for now- 

For now it is enough to know that it is something they’re going to one day discuss. That they _will_ and that they _can._ That, all this time, they’ve not been alone in loving one another.

It’s a giddying relief and she’s terribly glad Percy seems to feel the same way. He finds so many small ways to be affectionate so often she doesn’t really have time to hate Ripley for the few moments he sometimes has of fear when she leans to kiss him.

“I don’t want to fear,” he reminds her when she pulls back, apologetic. “I’m choosing this.”

* * *

She suspects the others have guessed or will guess soon enough. It’s not as though she and Percy are being terribly subtle - it’s not as though, she thinks, they _want_ to be terribly subtle; they’ve wasted far too much time with their own anxieties alone, even before all Ripley did. That they can have even this little part of what they want is too bright a joy to hide.

Percy pauses his work when she stops by his door. It’s mid-afternoon, far earlier than she’d usually stop by, but she’s feeling fond and Trinket wants a walk and there’s no reason why not, really. They’ve never hidden that they go for walks together.

He looks tired when he turns to face her, slight bags beneath his eyes that are better than they have been since Ripley but worse than they’ve been recently. His smile is bright, though, as his hands start quickly setting everything in its proper place.

“Going for a walk,” she says, as though it’s not obvious with Trinket right beside her. “If you’re not too busy to join us?”

He smiles again. “Not with anything that can’t wait,” he says. “Give me a moment.”

* * *

The woods are as lovely as ever. There’s more birdsong in the day than the night and she doesn’t have to point out all of the potholes and fallen branches. It balances out and they walk comfortably down the familiar path, flitting in and out of conversation, content with familiar company. Sometimes, as they walk, their knuckles brush.

“Percy?”

“Yes dear?”

She pauses a moment, considering the question, before deciding _to hell with it._ Percy’s answered sideways when he’s needed to, has said outright when he doesn’t wish to speak of things. She doesn’t doubt he will here too, if he needs to.

“Ripley,” she says. “What she did to you, did she- before, with the Briarwoods. Did she then?”

He blinks, owlish in his surprise. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, not then.”

“Then why-”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t _want_ to know. Some reason that only makes sense to her, I suspect.” He laughs, something dry but somehow honest and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m glad I don’t understand it, honestly.”

It’s strange for a moment, Percy’s incuriousness, but it makes sense too. Vex remembers all the things he has said of Ripley - his distrust, his dislike that is more than dislike but actual outright hatred and fear. That, of all people, he considers her the worst he’s ever met, that part of why he distrusts himself is because of how he could understand how she thought. It makes sense, she thinks, that he would draw relief from not understanding her in this one thing.

“If I had to guess,” he says. “I suspect I didn’t matter enough then. But then- I escaped. I made guns. And suddenly, I suppose, I was _interesting.”_ He shakes his head again. “But that’s only a guess. And that only explains capture not-”

He trails off. When Vex reaches for his hand he jolts, but his fingers wrap around hers happily. 

“It doesn’t have to explain the rest,” she says gently. “As long as you’re doing better now.”

“I am,” he says softly, squeezing her hand. “I very much am.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand that is the lot of this! I hope you all enjoyed the ride - if you did, please leave a comment below to tell me what you loved!
> 
> I'll be posting a new fic, also Percy-centric, next Monday, so keep an eye out if you'd like more, and of course, always feel free to come and yell at me over on [tumblr](https://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/)!


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